“I’m going to take some of your blood, Mrs. Dieter.” His breath smelled like sour milk.
“I need to…” Deb said weakly. “Are… are you…?”
“I’m Dr. Madison. I assist Dr. Forenzi.”
He was tugging on some rubber gloves, and gave Deb a crooked smile.
Is this the guy? Or does he just look like the guy, and my imagination is doing the rest?
Deb sometimes thought she saw people she knew in crowds, only to look closer and realize they just resembled the people she knew. Her mind filled in the blanks, jumped to conclusions. It happened to everyone.
Is it happening to me now?
“Why, Mrs. Dieter. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He opened up a plastic package, taking out a long needle attached to a clear tube.
Maybe this isn’t the guy. Maybe Forenzi hired him because he looked like the man Deb knew.
To scare her.
After all, this is a fear study.
“You… remind me of someone.”
“I get that a lot. George Clooney, right?”
More like Boris Karloff.
“Please put your arm on the armrest, Mrs. Dieter. I’m going to strap it down so you keep still.”
He buckled a strap around her wrist.
“So, are you from around here, Doctor?”
“Oh, no. I’m from West Virginia.”
Where the Rushmore was.
“Been here a while?”
“Only recently. For the past few years I’ve been… busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
He smiled again. “Just hold still, Mrs. Dieter. This will only pinch for a moment.”
The needle was jammed into her forearm. The agony was immediate.
Then he began to move it from side to side.
“Where is that vein? I can never find it.”
Deb ground her teeth, locking her jaw. The doctor wiggled it, going deeper, so deep Deb was sure he’d hit bone.
The pain was bad. But the anxiety was nuclear.
Deb shut her eyes again, begging the universe for it to stop.
“You have such tiny veins. I may have to get a smaller needle.”
Yes! Please please please do that!
Her whole world had been reduced to that needle in her flesh, probing, twisting, poking left and right like she was being tenderized instead of giving blood.
“Maybe I should try the other arm.”
No!
“Yes, I think that’ll I have to… ahh, there it is.”
Deb chanced a look and saw him attach a vacuum vial to the end of the tube, and it began to fill with blood.
“Was that so awful, Mrs. Dieter?”
Deb’s hair was stuck to her head from sweating. She blew out a deep breath, and pumped her fist to make the blood go faster.
“Looking good, Mrs. Dieter. Looking… oh, wait. We’re slowing down.”
He flicked the vial with a fingernail, which tugged on the needle and caused Deb a spike of pain.
“I believe your vein has collapsed.” He roughly grabbed the needle, then pulled it out.
“Do we have enough blood?” Deb whispered.
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“So…?”
“So I guess we’ll have to try that other arm after all.”
Before Deb could object, the doctor was pinning down her other wrist and buckling it to the armrest.
She was trapped.
“What are you doing?”
“You recognized me. From the hotel. I can see it in your eyes. Don’t you lie to me, girl.”
Deb immediately began to thrash and yell, but the moment she opened her mouth, the man waved his hand over her face and Deb could no longer make a sound. It felt like something foul had crawled inside her throat and was choking her from the inside out, even though she was still able to breathe. Deb screamed, loud as she could, but it only came out as a hiss of air. She tried to kick him, but he caught her left prosthetic and pressed the vacuum release, letting it drop to the floor. He did the same with the left one.
“Ya know my name is Franklin.” His voice was getting deeper, the southern accent more pronounced. “Ya know I’m very angry about what y’all did at the Rushmore.”
Deb pulled on her arms as hard as she could, until her elbows felt like they were going to pop. But old as the examination table was, it was built solid.
She was trapped.
Franklin strolled over to the equipment cart. He ran his hand over the antique medical tools, his fingers caressing the rusty speculum.
“Ya know I’m angry about going to prison. I’m really, really angry about that, girl. Do ya know why?”
He picked up the hand drill.
“I’ll tell ya why.”
Deb was growing light headed from her attempts at screaming. She tried to push Franklin away with her stumps, but he simply moved to the side of the table.
Then he placed the drill bit on Deb’s thigh, pressing down hard.
“Because,” he whispered to her, “one year ago today, I died in prison.”
He reached his hand down the front of his pants—
—and pulled out a handful of something, throwing it in Deb’s face.
At first, she thought it was rice.
Then the rice began to wiggle.
Maggots.
Franklin put both hands on the drill.
“I don’t like being dead, girl. The spirit world is all fucked up. So I’m going to hurt ya. I’m going to hurt ya so bad. And then I’m going to hurt that husband of yours even worse.”
Just as he began to turn, the back door to the examination room began to slowly open.
Then the lights flickered and went out.
Deb screamed in the blackness, making no more noise than a leaky tire.
A moment later, the lights came back on, just as the drill clattered to the floor.
Deb saw a man in a lab coat standing in front of her.
“I’m Dr. Madison,” he said. “What in God’s name has happened to you?”
Deb tried to talk, but she had no voice. she tried to point with her chin where Franklin was standing.
But Franklin wasn’t there.
Franklin had disappeared.
Mal
When the door opened, and he saw Deb crying and hysterical, something in Mal snapped. He stormed into the exam room, demanding answers from the doctor, listening to his wife try to talk but unable to.
Someone—Tom—finally figured out that she couldn’t speak, and Dr. Madison gave Deb a pen and some paper to relate her story.
Deb’s handwriting was erratic, and didn’t make much sense, but the part that stuck out the most was the word she wrote and circled several times.
GHOST
“So he bound your arms, tried to take blood, then threatened you with the drill?” Tom asked.
Deb nodded. Mal felt sick.
“And you say it was a man named Franklin? Someone you’d met before?”
Another nod.
“He’s in prison,” Mal said. “But he could have gotten out.”
Deb beckoned for the paper and wrote “Franklin said he died in prison.”
“That’s easy enough to check,” Tom said. Then he pointed to the floor. “So is this drill. My guess is that ghosts don’t leave fingerprints.”
Deb shook her head and wrote “gloves”.
“Careful ghost.” Tom looked at Madison. “And you’re sure no one went past you, Doctor?”
“Positive. I was standing in the doorway the whole time. And…”
The doctor’s face pinched.
“And?”
“When I came in here, before the lights went out, I saw Mrs. Dieter. But… I didn’t see anyone else.” He turned to Deb, looking pained. “I’m sorry, but you were alone in here, dear.”
Mal wanted to hit somebody. “This qualifies as assault, right Detective?”