“ This guy kills in Richmond and Winston-Salem, and makes an attempt in Fayetteville, and now here. So, he gets around.”
“ We suspect he may be a working as a deliveryman using a van, dark blue, but then again, anyone having a reason to travel the southeast could be him.”
Jessica said goodbye to Combs and looked up at Santiva.
“ Hey, it's your kind of case, Jess.”
“ Death of a third victim from this brain-hunter,” she muttered, her hands racing to her temples.
“ Jess, I've seen brains caved in, I've seen brain knifings, but I've never seen one stolen. Look, I'll put a helicopter on standby for you. Get out of here and get packed.”
“ The crimes in North Carolina and Virginia began what? A month ago now? I wonder why he slowed down, and what lured him to Jacksonville, Florida.” Anyone's guess at this point. Like I said, a helicopter will be waiting for you. Pack and get out there. I'll say good night, and Jess, be careful. You know firsthand that there're a lot of sharks inhabiting Florida waters.”
FOUR
Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue.
Marriott Hotel, Savannah, Georgia Same night
He located the computer terminal in the hotel and went onto the Internet in search of the words that would encourage him to continue on his quest. Like an addict, he quickly found the site he wanted. It read:
While we have separate bodies, we have a singular mind. Every individual shares in this universal mind or soul. The result of even touching slightly on this cosmic mind is an illumination and understanding so profound and mystical, as cited by St. Thomas Aquinas before his death in 1274. Comparing it, he declared all his learning a mere “straw.” Mystic Jacob Boehme wrote: “The gate opened to me… so that I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at a university.”
It is a sharing, my friends, in the inexhaustible spring of eternity He read it, breathed it in, this confirmation that, despite the horror of his actions, he was doing the right thing. This was no simple rationalization. These were facts. Cahil's words were essentially correct, all but his having wrongly fed on the days-old dead in his grave raids rather than the living-and, of course, the foolish notion that a single small island of tissue deep within the medulla oblongata alone held the soul, could also be dismissed as wrongheadedness.
Grant Kenyon and Phillip knew better. The brain to be consumed had to be minutes fresh, not days old. And the entire brain had to be consumed, not a small shred of Cahil's ridiculous gray noodle. Grant had argued this with anyone logging on to Cahil's website who cared to listen.
Cahil had robbed those graves thirteen years ago not for the whole brain but for a two-inch-long finger-sized sliver of it. Such a piece of tissue could not possibly house all of the cosmic mind or soul of an individual, to act as the funnel for the cosmic river to enter the brain. Besides, why take chances? Consume everything, his own mind consistently told him.
Still, it was good to know all of Cahil's thoughts on the subject in order to implicate Cahil as the so-called Skull-digger. To this end, Grant Kenyon had used Cahil's beliefs against him. Still, fortified with Cahil's encouraging words, Kenyon logged off, signed off on the computer use with a fake ID and returned the key to the desk.
It was time to acquire more of the C-mind, the cosmic soul, the most profound excitement, and that awe-inspiring power that his other self required of him and fed on. Promises had been made; a deal between him and his brain had been struck: that if he stepped up his hunting, and Phillip could feed faster, the final prize was realized sooner.
He asked the desk clerk where he could find some action. The man's confused expression asked, What kind of action? Grant said, “Where're the clubs around here? You know, music, dancing, women?”
“ Oh, well, there are a number of strips.”
“ Can you show me on a map?”
“ Most certainly.”
Outside Savannah, Georgia 2 A.M., July 8, 2003
All that the completely possessed Dr. Grant Kenyon-as Phillip-wanted was the girl's brain, nothing more. They- the authorities-could have the rest.
And so Phillip the Cosmic Seeker-as his brain sometimes called itself-would feed.
He switched on the tensor lamp directed at his fourth victim s cranium. The light blinded her as she struggled for consciousness and blinked in disorientated fervor. He began the operation by shaving the area of the scalp, backing off her hairline. He whispered, “So as to make the cut as clean as possible.”
She moaned in response, her body somehow aware of him atop her, independently squirming against her restraints there in the back of the van. Next he shaved her eyebrows with a battery-operated shaver followed by a razor. They must come off completely. He didn't want any hairs adhering to the brain when he removed it.
The Demoral was enough to keep her groggy, but she was coming around, feeling the pressure of the razor against her scalp and eyebrows. More forceful now, she continued to struggle against her bonds a struggle that only excited the Cosmic Seeker. She had no power against the handcuffs around her wrists and ankles, which Phillip had instructed Grant to install in his van-along with the surgical leather strap that held her head in place at the throat and temples.
He had driven out to Picketville, an area of little population, and parked in a wooded area near the train tracks. No one for a mile or so. No one to hear her struggle or her screams when he chose to take the gag away and click on the handheld rotary bone saw.
Grant had no trouble performing the operation. After all, it was a procedure he'd performed on cadavers at the morgue. He had studied the pathology books and had been placed in charge of the morgue when old Graham Dobson had died. Since then, four years ago, Grant had opened up and examined some thirty brains, most of which he'd put back, but many he'd consumed. He had become proficient while at Mt. Holyoke Memorial Hospital at opening and closing the cranium in the manner he now performed on the living. It was a procedure he watched closely during his medical training. He recalled the excitement of wanting to know precisely how each incision was made in order to create a large enough frontal window from which to take hold of and remove the brain-to pluck it free of its prison. The medical books, his pathology instructor and the old hospital pathologist had made it look easy, but he had known even after doing it several times now on a living subject that it was never easy or without problem. The brain could be stubbornly anchored, especially in the living.
He removed the gag and said, “Now, this is just a razor. I just finished shaving your head. Necessary, Winona, before I cut it open.”
Winona Miller screamed in response. He glanced at the tape recorder set up earlier by Phillip to catch all the sound effects-in order to prove to Grant that he had actually done this hideous deed again.
“ I have to search your brain for answers. I want to share with you all my sight, dear girl, and you will come to know who you really are. I know your soul is in there, inside your head.”
“ What… what do you… want from me?”
“ Your memory, your DNA and your cosmic mind.”
“ What?”
“ Now, I have to mark where the cuts will go,” he said, replacing the razor with a red marker. The soft kiss of the marker made her tremble even more than the razor had. She started screaming and pleading for her life.
“ I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die…”
“ I don't so much want your life as your brain. It's the only reason we're here, Winona.”
She screamed in response.
He breathed in her terror; it made Phillip feel powerful to make her scream. Her screams penetrated the van walls and echoed out into the night, but they were far from anyone who could hear.