The Basement
As the pain slowly receded and he began to regain consciousness, Matt felt violent tugs on his arms but could do nothing to fight it. He heard the labored breaths, felt himself being awkwardly lifted into the air and slapped down onto something cold and sticky. He tried to shake his blurred vision away as his coat then his shirt was ripped open, but the pain on top of his head was too great.
The doctor spoke, his voice was smug and condescending, a yellowed smile creased his lips. "Well, if it isn't our new janitor. How are we feeling this evening?"
Matt tried to move, but his hands and legs were bound to the gurney. His instincts had proved somewhat correct; there was a victim down here. But he was that victim. He rigorously wished that he'd listened to the part of his intuition that had told him to leave.
"Wh-what the hell's happening?" he managed to slur out in between agonizing thumps of his head, each one feeling not much less in intensity than the initial crack.
"I should be asking you that question, don't you think? This is my house, and you entered uninvited."
Matt wished his heart would stop racing. Every beat made it agonizingly hard to think, and his blurred vision was beginning to haze over. Definitely a concussion, but he had the feeling it was going to get worse--much much worse.
"I-I'm with the FBI. I'm not alone." he lied.
"Oh, I didn't think you were really a janitor. Your hands look much too clean and manicured for that sort of work. But I do think you're alone. The cigarette in the car gave you away. Bad habit you know. Those things can kill you." His stained smile turned into an energetic laugh.
The noise from the wall sounded again. It seemed to be trying to laugh also, but the noise was more like that of a dying cat.
If anything had left him, Matt wished it had been his hearing. The cry from the wall made his blood turn to sludge. His eyes widened in terror at its golem reverberation.
"Seems Nathan has taken a liking to you," Dr. Dougen said.
"W-who?" Matt queried as he struggled in his binds.
"Nathan, that's my boy. I'd properly introduce him to you, but I don't like him acquainting himself with dinner."
Another growl, menacing, frenetic followed by more guttural, half-formed words and clacking teeth.
"Sounds l-like an animal," Matt replied trying desperately not to show the agonizing fear that was enveloping him.
The doctor slapped the man across his face. "That's my son you're referring to," he said with the wrathful passion that any father would have at a familial degradation. "My flesh and blood." He gazed into the dark hole in the wall with an aspect of pity on his face. "I warned Darla--she was my wife, you know--that working all those years with experimental drugs and chemicals in the research lab would have an adverse affect on her health. She finally listened, but it was too late--too late." The man's eyes began to tear, and the thing in the hole whimpered. "Then, Nathan was born. Actually, I guess the proper term might be miscarried alive. I found Darla on the kitchen floor when I came home that day. Nathan had made it through the delivery fine, but Darla, well--. And I had to keep him a secret, you see. People just wouldn't be very understanding about his countenance and his--well . . . his unique appetite, let's just say."
"Th-the people. The missing people--."
"Oh yes," the doctor affirmed, shaking his head quickly, "that was me. You see, Nathan needs to eat. He's a growing boy, aren't you, Nathan?" He patted the wall. "He didn't like anything I tried to feed him, tried everything, really. Nothing worked until one day he bit me." He rolled up his sleeve to show a silver-dollar-size scar on the meaty part of his forearm. "Eureka!" he exclaimed. "My boy liked meat, not just any meat though, oh no--human meat. At first, autopsy meat sufficed, but as I said, he's a growing boy and soon needed to be fed more often then the bodies I could produce." He shrugged his shoulders casually, "So I just went out and did a little--grocery shopping, so to speak."
Matt became incontinent as his body began to spasm in protest to the terror that coursed his veins like an overloaded circuit. He could no longer think clearly with the jackhammer pain throbbing in his head, and he tried to scream, but barely a whisper could escape him.
Dr. Dougen pressed his face ever so close to Matt's spinning, blurry eyes. His whole being reeked with the stench of formaldehyde. He said, "Don't you see? I killed them for Nathan. He needed them. He needed to eat." He smiled demonically. "And you came just in time for his next feeding." He picked up a scalpel and steadied it in one hand as he put an odd-smelling handkerchief over Matt's nose with the other, almost instantly making him groggy.
"I'd just give you to him, but he's still a child, so I have to feed him by hand. We don't want him choking on any bones, now do we?" He winked into the oily shadows. "It's supper time!"
At that, the ringing of the doorbell shot the doctor's head skyward. He instantly went to the door he had gone into earlier, opened it slightly, and through the garage windows, he saw flashing red and blue lights; it was the police.
Matt had noticed it, too, through his increasingly blurred vision. His terror began to abate, knowing that the police were there. Frank must have had the same idea of staking out the pathologist's house that he'd had and, after having gotten there and seeing Matt's car empty, thought the worse. He was damned good agent and a lifesaver to boot, Matt thought. No doubt he'd be cleaning Frank's apartment for a year to make this up.
"My, my. It looks as though we have company, Nathan," said the doctor through furrowed brows.
Another ring.
Matt wanted so badly to cry out, but the effects of the liquid in the hanky were taking their toll, and he was now on the verge of a deep sleep. He fought desperately to keep his eyes attuned to the flashing lights coming through the still-slightly-open door.
There was loud knocking, now. Insistent banging.
That's right, Matt barely thought. Pound it down and come unloosen me!
As he went around to the front of the gurney, clutching it, Dr. Dougen finally said, "Looks like you'll be fending for yourself this evening, Nathan."
Matt's eyes widened in horror. But in the brief moments before the darkness that encroached on his sight completely engulfed him, he looked down at his feet and into the black abyss. Like an out-of-focus monster movie, something came to the edge of the table, though still shrouded in an onyx blanket. It had a grotesquely malformed head, eyes that glowed like liquid mercury, clicking teeth, a hungry purr. A fleshy, mottled-green, claw like hand broke from the darkness and stroked his leg. "S-s-supper," it gurgled.
Was it a dream? Was that just a drug-induced demon waiting to pounce once the opiate in the hanky took completely over? Matt wished the whole thing was a dream, but he knew pitifully that it wasn't.
"Be careful of the bones," the doctor said dutifully. Then he gave the gurney a shove, slipping it back into the darkness within and placed the sliding masonry wall back into position, leaving no trace of what had just transpired there.
And for the first time in his life, as an eternal darkness settled over him, Matt McIver wished he had been anything but an FBI agent.
The police, after an unsuccessful search of the house, had finally left. Dr. Dougen, now in pajamas, descended the basement stairs for the last time that evening. He stretched his bones and let out a weary yawn as he shuffled over to the secret door. He patted the wall gently and said, "Good night, Nathan. I love you, son."
A long, muffled burp from behind the wall was all the reply.
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