By the time Rick got back to attempting to contact the FBI, it had gotten extremely late. He'd do it tomorrow. He picked up the scrap of paper he had written down as the agent's E-mail and stuffed it into his jeans pocket, and after signing out, he rushed home on his bike.
New Bern, North Carolina Same night
GRANT Kenyon felt a great frustration coming over Phillip, and a growing anger directed at him from Phillip. He could not effect a kill tonight, no matter how hard he tried. The only possible victim he'd been able to locate was an obvious street slut, hardly virtuous, his mind told him, hardly adequate. He'd gone hunting on his computer as well, contacting several local women, but in all cases they could not come out and play.
None of his powers of persuasion worked tonight.
So he had cruised every downtown bar and grill and nightclub. Nothing presented itself. No opportunity came. It simply wasn't meant to be, unless he got bold and forcibly abducted his prey. Phillip pushed him to do just that, the urge to feed outweighing all other considerations.
He grabbed a tire iron he kept beside the seat, got out of the van and approached a couple coming out of a movie theater. He quickly moved on the man, pounding one hard blow to the head, sending him reeling and falling against his car. At the same time, Grant grabbed the girl and yanked her toward his van. She kicked and screamed for help. Taking hold of her neck, he cut off her breathing and plunged the Demoral into her forearm. Attempting to pull open the van door and place her inside, he didn't anticipate her strength and resolve, as she kicked the door closed.
Another man came racing toward them, his hands raised, prepared to fight. Panicked, Grant pushed the girl into her would-be savior, and he rushed around the front of the van and got into it.
He'd left the motor running, and now he backed out, hitting the prone boyfriend and tearing off as the bystander helped the young woman to her feet.
He tore away, watching the result of his second failed attempt to abduct a North Carolina woman, first Fayetteville the month before, and now New Bern. Maybe I'll give up on this state, he told himself and Phillip, who was already berating him for failing to get what they'd come for.
Sometime later, miles from the failed attempt, Grant grew weary-eyed and fatigued. He found a Motel 8, pulled in and got a room. He parked his van against the wall, opened the rear and snatched out his wireless laptop computer.
In order to keep his computer tracks hidden, he often used public computers at libraries and hotels, but sometimes he opted for the convenience of his laptop. He felt an urge now to communicate with others of a like-mindedness tonight. He knew of several websites devoted to the brain. Some were quite technical, scientific, medical, while others were far from it, what one would call far out-ideas about the brain that predated any modern knowledge of its workings. Some were devoted to arcane beliefs, long since refuted by modern science. However one site, which he had followed since its inception created by Daryl Cahil from his asylum cell, agreed with Grant's belief that the brain was the seat of the soul.
Kenyon had chronicled Cahil's arrest, incarceration and recent release. It was on Cahil's website that Grant had learned about the Island of Dr. Benjamin Artemus Rheil. Cahil had put forth his idea along with a crude sketch of the two-inch island of tissue. He depicted it in a cross shape with a bulb atop it.
The idea that you needn't consume the entire brain to consume the soul, but rather simply consume this island of tissue had appealed to Grant. On the other hand, Phillip, who loved the taste of gray matter, remained fixedly unconvinced of Cahil's ideas. As a result, Phillip dictated feeding on the entire sword and sheath-soul and brain.
Still, Phillip also grew fascinated with Cahil's ideas. Grant argued with Phillip repeatedly over the issue, and to settle it, Grant had cut away at his and Phillip's first victim's brain until he found Anna Gleason's Island of Rheil and announced to Phillip, “Since you disbelieve Cahil's theory, I'm sending Anna Gleason's Rheil to Daryl. You can't mind that, can you?”
“ Why should I?” Phillip had responded. “It is not the site of the soul or the portal to the cosmic mind-to God or the God-force-as Cahil preaches. The brain itself is.”
“ I will do it,” Grant had held up the tissue to his eyes so that Phillip could see he meant what he said.
“ Go right ahead,” Phillip had dared Grant, who realized that the strange Cahil had caught Phillip's imagination. “It'll be interesting to test Cahil's resolve to lick his habit by sending him a savory morsel. Of course, it has to be the island of tissue that Cahil so craves.”
And so it was sent overnight via UPS.
Grant had given a fictitious return address with no card or explanation. He just wanted Cahil to know that someone was listening and doing something about his theories. Just a one-time offer to share with Daryl to see what would come of his foolish notions about symbolically feeding on the cosmic mind, a trite and idiotic gesture. It had started out for Grant as an attempt to maintain some sort of control over Phillip, to hold on to a shred of defiance. Phillip, on the other hand, saw this as an opportunity to implicate Cahil in the killings, should he need a stooge in the future.
Now settled in his hotel room, Grant and Phillip logged on to Cahil's website and entered the chat room, sharing brain recipes and small talk about brain functions with the cyber community-most of whom knew next to nothing about the brain. Still, he felt a great amusement at their foolish and often bizarre notions.
Remaining the most bizarre of all was Cahil's own “revelation” about the Island of Rheil, which he described in great detail, having eaten a number of them before being caught in that Morristown, New Jersey, cemetery. Cahil had even drawn a picture of it that detailed where in the brain it was located, curled and waiting deep in the midbrain. He described his criminal history of robbing dead children in their coffins of their Islands of Rheil. He claimed children were more potently endowed with the cosmic mind. He also bragged that he had “licked” his “horrible” habit, and now he only fed on the kind of animal brains found in tin cans on grocery shelves and representations of the island, using pasta of all things.
More than a month had gone by since Grant had shipped off that small portion of Anna Gleason's brain. Tonight Grant opened a news page of the website to find a computer photograph of the Island of Rheil. Cahil had placed the real thing on the Web. He had foolishly put it out there that he had a human Rheil in his possession, and that he wanted to share in what it actually looked like. Beside it, a six-inch ruler had been placed to give it scale. It did roughly resemble the cross he had drawn earlier.
Most cyber-folk looking at the image would likely think it a hoax, reasoned Grant. Phillip concurred. But Cahil declared it the real thing, sent to him by a devotee-someone who had taken him at his word. He thanked the faceless benefactor.
Grant and Phillip keyed in the question,
Cahil, did you eat it?
They waited for a reply but it didn't come.
“ He ate it,” Phillip told Grant.
“ You really think so?”
“ I'm certain he could not have resisted. A leopard never changes its spots.”
Public library, Florence, Illinois Same night
AT age sixty-four, James McPherson prided himself on being a lifelong learner. After retirement from the military, he had little to do to occupy himself, so he had determined to learn everything and anything he could from the world of books and now the world of the Internet.
He had become curious recently about how the brain worked and functioned, computers so often being likened to it. And he had a friend who had recently succumbed to Alzheimer's, and James was having trouble now with balance himself. While cross-checking, he had come upon information on the cerebellum at a curious website, and now he read up on this part of the brain: