Grave Instinct

SEVEN

Wichita, Kansas Same time

Wanda Rae Hamilton ran her fourteen-year-old fingers over the keyboard at the Wichita Public Library, searching for religious meaning from the Internet. All her life her parents had pressed religion on her, and she wanted to know what the rest of the world thought about it. She thought she might write a book on it one day.

However, the articles she had found so far proved boring until she put in “mind” and “soul” as her keywords. Suddenly the screen was alive with choices. She made her selection and the screen filled with:

Spirit or soul is like God, androgynous, without a sexual element and so in a class by itself, and it cannot be derived from any other field of knowledge. The soul has preexisted, having had its beginning in God, before its earthly and bodily time. It is the God-element within man. It rules over the earthly body as the nucleus or inmost center of man's being. “This rules,” muttered Wanda Rae. She read on:

Some believe it resides in the heart, but most concur it resides in the brain at the center of the mind. Partaking of the brain leads to partaking of the soul, and to partake of the soul, one arrives at the cosmic soul.

To learn more about the mind inside your own body and its relationship to the soul therein, and the cosmic soul of the universe, read on…

Wanda Rae Hamilton looked away from what she'd read, trying to digest it. Somehow, tearing her eyes away from the website felt like the right thing to do, that there was something underlying the seemingly benign exterior of the words that wanted to rob her of something… something she could not quite put her finger on but it was there, palpable even. Alive. And dangerous. Yet the words, while confusing, proved so tantalizing to her young mind. She wanted to understand it better. Perhaps by reading on:

The soul is the permanent ground, the continuing ent of each individual.

Wanda wrote down the strange word “ent,” thinking she must look it up later. She read on:

The soul is restored and rejuvenated to true life only after death of the body, but it does not remain long; therefore, if one wishes to 'harvest' the soul, that is by inhaling and consuming another soul, one must do so quickly. When the individual dies there is that brief time-no one knows exactly how long this time period is-when a soul leaves a brain.

Aboriginal tribes who ate the brains of their enemies believed that this soul, once consumed-if still home within the human cortex of the brain-energizes and makes powerful the feeder, so that his soul benefits by glimpses of God, the most ecstatic of all feelings on the planet…

Wanda again pulled her eyes from the text. She clicked back to the Web home page where she had come across this information. It was created by a man named Daryl Thomas Cahil. She wondered if it were true. It must be, she guessed, if it's on the Internet.

Public library, Chimera, Louisiana Same time

Total, pure, transcendent, the cosmic mind is an ocean of light and objectivity opening onto the universe. Fed from this unseen source, the brain has a limitless potential, and it certainly exceeds the capacity of the nervous system. Men like Zoraster, Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus Christ, St. Paul, Lao-tzu, Shakespeare, Blake and Byron-sages, prophets and seers-have tapped the radiance of the cosmic ocean, but these are minds above the ordinary. The rest of us must take our share of the trickle from the cosmic spring.

Greater minds than ours know that the cosmic con-sciousness-the universal soul-has shown itself to men in heightened or altered states, in moments of high intensity as in the presence of death!

Do not hesitate to take that portion of the mind you have a right to.

The fifteen-year-old Chimera high-school student backed his chair away from the computer, puzzling out just what this guy in New Jersey was saying to him. The young man was a straight-A student and a member of the Key Club; he had a civic sense of duty. He had stumbled onto the website while looking for information on how the brain worked for a school paper.

“ What's this guy saying?” he wondered aloud.

He returned to the keyboard and opened on a chat room. In the room, people were talking back and forth about brains-and how to prepare them. Some put forth recipes, and while it was ghoulish and it made the young man squirm in his seat, he imagined it all that brand of stupid humor reserved for the adolescent mind, a demographic that Rick Trewalen sometimes felt ashamed to be a part of. The words on the screen, however, became worse when he encountered a strange section of the site that spoke of the Skull-digger.

Some of the people in the chat room made the Skull-digger out to be a hero, someone capable of doing what the rest of them only dreamed about. While they fed on animal remains for their needs, he had tapped into something these nutcases referred to as the Rheil thing.

“ Can't even spell 'real,'” the kid said to the computer.

He then went to a telephone and called Information for the closest FBI office. An agent named Sorrento asked young Rick if he could forward what he had on his screen to his office.

“ Sure… sure, I can do that.”

After performing the operation, Rick was drawn back to the screen. He wanted to see more. As disgusting as the site was, he felt a strange fascination with it.

When he finally became exhausted with the Web page, he checked to see if he had any incoming messages. A few keystrokes and he was staring at his message board. Two from friends, one from the Mail-Demon. This meant he'd keyed in some wrong digit in the message to the FBI. He'd have to try all over again, and pray he'd written the address correctly. But first, he decided to contact his two friends and clue them into the weird website he'd stumbled onto.

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:

The cerebellum, or little brain, is also known geographically as the hindbrain. While not part of the brain stem, it is connected to the stem. It lies in the lower back part of the skull and regulates equilibrium and coordination of muscular movement and balance in walking. Injury here creates a staggering gait, palsy and slurred speech.

“ This shit may be helpful but it's written in such a boring manner,” he told himself. “There has to be something more lively on the subject.” He shook his head over this and surfed off toward another site.

He came across something on the “cosmic connection” of the mind, and this phraseology instantly caught his attention. Surfing through, he read:

Mind is the factor inherent in and underlying all things in the universe. In varying degrees, we find it present everywhere, even though some psychologists have denied its existence, dismissing mind as a mistake of language-that it was a semantical blunder to have put a name to it. Still, there exists a kind of psychic life that abides not only in mankind and animals but in plants, and in ail (so-called) inanimate ents (units of existence) or entities. This leads us to ask about the universal ocean of consciousness from which our minds are mere drips…

“ Drips indeed. Now that's interesting,” McPherson said to the screen. “We're all a bunch of drips.” His laughter caught the ear and the ire of a desk librarian, who now squinted vulturelike in his direction.

The Krandal family home, Calvert City, Iowa Same evening

Seventeen-year-old Jill Krandal opened the website she had become fascinated with, logging on as Chix whix. She had a soft drink and potato chips beside her, and she had settled in for a long party with others to chat about brainy matters on the Net. She hadn't logged on for a long time. She wanted to see if Surreal and Motor mouth might be online tonight with their funny remarks about the brain-Got brains?

They all agreed that the Webmaster was weird, but that didn't matter. If he really ate cat and dog brains, and if he really did once steal brains from humans in their graves- children-who cared? If he was allowed to set up this website and talk about cannibalizing brains, then it must be all right, she reasoned.

Still, she knew her parents would put an end to it, if they knew. She just liked the chat room and topics provided there. She didn't take the Webmaster seriously, and she and her friends online guessed that he had a problem with telling the truth.

Her heart leapt when she made contact with Surreal. She keyed in:

CHIXWHIX: Surreal… How've you been? Whataya hear from Motor mouth?

SURREAL: Hey there Chixie-wixie. Nothing from Motor, but lots from that guy who keeps hitting on me.

CHIXWHIX: What's he want?

SURREAL: Says he wants to get together.

CHIXWHIX: That Seeker guy? Don't even think about it. He hits on me, too.

SURREAL: Did he offer you a way out of Calvert City?

CHIXWHIX: Whataya mean?

SURREAL: He wants to send me a bus ticket, and it's tempting.

CHIXWHIX: Don't be a fool, Surreal.

SURREAL: I hate Lynchburg as much as you hate Iowa.

CHIXWHIX: A ticket to where?

SURREAL: He said anywhere I'd care to meet him.

CHIXWHIX: Don't do it, Surreal.

SURREAL: Wouldn't you do it? Use the ticket if he sent it to you?

In Calvert City, Jill stopped typing long enough to consider the question. Then she adamantly keyed in her reply:

CHIXWHIX: No, and you shouldn't either!

SURREAL: One way to get outta this hick town and away from my mom.

CHIXWHIX: You could be raped or murdered. Would that make you happy?

SURREAL: You've been watching too many repeats of UNSOLVED MYSTERIES. Don't worry. I'd be too chicken anyway.

CHIXWHIX: Promise?

SURREAL: All right already!

CHIXWHIX: Meantime, have you seen what Daryl the dick-head put on his news page?

SURREAL: No what?

CHIXWHIX: A photo of a G-D brain part!

SURREAL: I gotta go take a look. Be right back.

CHIXWHIX: I'll be waiting. Want to hear your reaction.

Canton, New York Same night

DAVID Byrd, superintendent for the Canton Public Schools, pulled his glasses from his eyes and tried to fathom what he was reading on his computer screen. It did not make a lot of sense, but it sounded an alarm in his head. This trash he was looking at might entice young minds. He had been hearing about a strange fascination many of his students at Canton had developed over a computer website. Word of mouth had fueled like a brushfire, and Byrd had pried information out of a problem kid who wore dark clothes, bleached his hair and sported jewelry and a tattoo. As a result, Superintendent Byrd had stayed late at the office to take a look at the Web page.

The page was filled with strange and disjointed information on the workings of the human brain and its relationship to the more spiritual mind, and how to expand the power of one's own brain by consuming the brains of other “ents” or “units of creation”-from chickens and other animals and even plants that “dream as we do.”

This immediately disturbed Byrd. He read on, wondering what steps he could take to bring an end to this frightening message board and newsletter, which even reported on the doings of the serial killer known as the Skull-digger the way others kept abreast of baseball and football players.

He scanned the reports and got to the Webmaster's explanation of why the Skull-digger fed on his victim's gray matter:

The Skull-digger knows about the cosmic mind. There is a thing we call the universal soul, and a gradation of mind in nature determined by varying degrees of awareness. The Skull-digger is more aware than any of us that there is a potency of mind from atoms to galaxies, and that all units of creation lead us closer to touching God in the sense that we touch on the universal mind. Such a touch or a glimpse will infuse us with a transcendent mind-aura beyond anything we might dream.

Mind even manifests itself in stone and other inanimate objects from particles to crystals and stars. Higher on the mind scale, we come to the mind that dreams in plants and proto-biological ents like viruses and amoeba. Unlike the inanimate, these ents are characterized by a vital mind devoted to metabolism, growth, reproduction and decay.

Finally comes the mind we see in animals, operating by means of organized neuro-atomic elements through senses and instinct. These we can consume in a symbolic and sometimes a real sense. In doing so, we have an opportunity to glimpse into the universal cosmic mind from which all minds were formed.

Superintendent Byrd took a moment to gather his breath and sip his coffee, which had gone cold. He girded himself and read on:

In other words, your present awareness is only a narrow band in a vast galaxy of mind awareness. You must learn to expand it. You do this by various means, and the Skull-digger is at the farthest end of that scale. You don't have to go out and kill someone for his/her brain in order to expand your conscious awareness of the universal soul. There are safer routes. I know because I spent time in prison for stealing brain matter from graves, but-

Superintendent Byrd recoiled at this last statement. “These are the rantings of a lunatic,” he said aloud. “I've got to expose this for what it is.” He wondered how widespread this bizarre site had become. He wondered where he might start to voice his objections: local authorities? State or federal officials? Scrolling down, he realized the man's rantings went on for limitless pages. He saw the photo of the Island of Rheil, the supposed center of the soul of an animate being-no, a human being! And he scanned the discussion on what this tissue from the brain meant. It was all madness. He determined to contact the local FBI and have their experts look at this.

He scrolled back to where he'd left off and read:

I've served my time, paid my debt to society, and now I seek that higher mind through the use of hunting and killing fair game, and consuming the Island of Rheil of the animal (deer, rabbit, etc.). A noble calling inherited from our ancestors, who were ignorant of the Island of Rheil, and so they barbarically consumed the entire brain. No, to consume the entire brain dulls the impact of what can be found in consuming only the island of the soul…

Byrd keyed in the order to print the pages he'd just read. As his printer worked, he reached for his telephone. After being left on hold for fifteen minutes on a phone tree, frustrated, he told his story to a field agent in Syracuse, New York, the closest federal agency. The agent said he would look into it and get back to Byrd, that he and every agent in the FBI appreciated such tips in locating the Skull-digger.

“ You misunderstand me. This guy is applauding the Skull-digger and spreading unsafe and insane information to children all over this and other countries through the Internet. It's sick propaganda directed at our children, Agent. No telling how long it's been going on, or how much irreparable damage has already been done. It's a kind of insidious, demoralizing-”

“ We'll make it a priority, sir. I have the dot-com address you've supplied, sir.”

“ It's like nothing we've seen before. Likely a terrorist group behind it, I tell you. We must put an end to it for the sake of America's youth.” “I'll make it a priority, sir, I promise.” The agent hung up.

Byrd stared at the phone and listened to the dial tone. He wondered if he ought to call the mayor's office, who would in turn call the governor, and maybe then he could get some assurances.

The wee hours of July 14, 2003

The phone awakened Jessica from a sound sleep in her Philadelphia hotel room. It was just past midnight. She had somehow avoided any nightmares, willing herself to find comforting dreams instead. She'd gotten back to the room in Philly early, had eaten room-service food, showered and gone to bed with Jack Deitze's case study of Cahil. She found Deitze's rehabilitation effort and theories questionable, but she focused on what she could learn of Cahil. Amazingly, Strand was right; the former grave robber had begun a website from his isolation ward. Dr. Gabriel Arnold had given Deitze complete authority over Cahil's treatment, and Deitze believed Cahil would benefit greatly from communicating to the world about why he had done what he had and to seek alternative ways to reach the pinnacle of “faith” he so craved.

The hotel phone continued to ring. She hesitated lifting it off the cradle. As far as she knew, only Eriq and J.T. had the hotel number, and she had turned off her cell phone.

When she lifted the receiver, Eriq Santiva launched right in with, “We've apprehended Daryl Cahil.”

“ Where?”

“ Where he called you from, Atlantic City, a phone booth near a motel he was at. Traced his whereabouts through a credit card number found in his house in Morristown.” She mentally calculated how long it would have taken Cahil to travel from southern Georgia to Atlantic City and back again to make those two calls. He could not have easily made it in the time allotted. “And the woman? His wife or girlfriend?”

“ Negative. I'm ready to believe what Strand told us, that the female caller was Cahil himself. That part of him that wants to be caught, Jess. We've seen the syndrome before.”

“ All the same, maybe we should alert Atlantic City authorities that we'd be interested in any recent Jane Doe's.”

“ Count on it.”

“ Did they do a search of his van, the beach motel room, along with his Morristown house?”

“ Nothing came of the room search. A quick search of his house was done by our men in Morristown, which turned up the credit card number. He wasn't driving a van-a rental sedan instead. No restraints or cutting tools found either.”

“ We need the tools, Eriq. We need the van.”

“ So far nothing of the sort. The searches have turned up nothing, but I'm still hopeful that a full forensic treatment will turn up something.”

“ How much time do we have on the search-and-seizure order at the Morristown location?”

“ Another twelve hours and it's history.”

“ I want to see how this guy lives, what he surrounds himself with.”

“ We're having him transported to Quantico for interrogation, but Jess, the creep… he won't talk to anyone but you.”

“ Me? Why the… why me?”

“ That's what he wants. Second to you, he'll only talk to Deitze,*nd none of us wants that, right?”

“ Damn it, why me?” she repeated. “Liked your whiskey voice, I guess. Come on, Jess, he knows your reputation, so he's going to play to that, and he knows you understand his kind.”

“ Lucky me. He's just yanking our chain. He wants another fifteen minutes of fame and publicity, Eriq, could be he's just cashing in on our case.”

“ He's the guy. The Ghoul is the Skull-digger.”

“ Eriq, you sound like Strand. You've already got this guy guilty without the evidence to back it.”

“ All right, just supposing Cahil isn't the Skull guy, he still may well give you some insight into what this latest ghoul is up to, why he's fixated on brain matter. Face it, Jess, with VICAP unable to provide us with anything, Cahil is a go.”

She didn't care for the sound of so much missing-the van, the restraints, the murderous tools, the height and weight problem-yet the sign left at the crime scenes and the drawings done in prison pointed to Cahil. “Do you really think this could lead to a conviction, Eriq?”

“ It's our best shot so far. I've arranged for a chopper to pick you up at the airport in Philly… to bring you home.”

“ With a detour to Morristown, have a look-see at what this creep calls home.”

“ All right. I'll meet you when you arrive at HQ. By the way, Jere Anderson asked me to pass along word that yes, the two earlier victims were tattooed with that cross you found in the skull. Only a small portion came up on the slides, but it's unmistakable under the microscope. Good work!”

“ I've gotten hold of a pair of prison drawings that Cahil did. I'm going to forward them. Have our documents experts compare them to the bone etchings.”

“ We'll arrange it.”

“ Is Cahil left-handed?” Matter of fact, yes.”

They said their goodbyes and Jessica stared up at the ceiling of the hotel room, the fan whirring overhead. She had earlier telephoned Lorena Combs and had left word about Daryl Cahil's website, asking if she could find any evidence that Manning or Miller had ever browsed or used the site. She dared hope they had found the monster, but not even a confession would put him away if they could not prove it.