Dr. Phibes Vulnavia's Secret Read online

  VULNAVIA’S SECRET The long key chains confirm that these ladies are jailers as well as caregivers. The loud clatter of keys makes the point! The never‐ending screams and wailings of the prisoner/patients provide the counterpoint…

  SUB‐CELLULAR CHEMISTRY Alexander Maximov was headed for a Nobel Prize…you could see it in the way the man carried himself. Most of what he said that night was lost but one phrase stood out: one into many. One into many. Phibes appreciated it.

  SKIN It wasn’t much of a decision, minor and certainly nothing to dwell on. Vulnavia’s skin had to be replaced. The damage to her head and neck was too great.

  HARRY TROUT ON THE BEACH

  Harry Trout was not in his room this morning. He was within earshot, near enough to hear the deskman’s voice but not caring to respond…he had stopped caring months ago.

  DIVA The girl with him was very pretty but there was nothing between them. Why that thought gave her a twinge, Sophie didn’t know.

  THE BAND

  In his hands, the bass became a band within a band, putting out this huge complex sound with…a soft harmonic that got under your skin.

  DIVERS

  His mission complete, the eagle hopped onto the brass telescope....the blood flecks around his beak were still fresh.

  FOSSIL WATER

  “The boundary between desert sun and fossil water can have extraordinary properties…if that point is ever reached.”

  THE ARPEGGIOS PLAY AT DAWN Vulnavia had been leafing through her book until she came to something that caused her to stop. Now she was looking very hard at the open page as if to grasp some meaning from the bit of verse printed there:

  And the arpeggios played at dawn!

  And the arpeggios played at dawn!

  PREPARATION The sea eagle might still be hungry. Besides, Phibes was putting on his heavy glove. It was time to talk business. She got up and took her leave so that they could commune in private.

  WILLIAM GOLDSTEIN

  Dr. Phibes

  VULNAVIA’S SECRET

  BOOK III.V OF THE CULT‐CLASSIC

  DR. PHIBES SERIES

  ALSO BY WILLIAM GOLDSTEIN

  THE CULT-CLASSIC DR. PHIBES SERIES Dr. Phibes Dr. Phibes Rises Again! Dr. Phibes – In The Beginning

  Dr. Phibes

  VULNAVIA’S SECRET

  BOOK III.V OF THE CULT‐CLASSIC

  DR. PHIBES SERIES

  WILLIAM GOLDSTEIN

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2012 by William Goldstein

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this manuscript may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Book design by Damon J.A. Goldstein

  Copyright © 2012 by Damon J.A. Goldstein

  Forever Phibes Icon and book plate design

  by Damon J.A. Goldstein

  Copyright © 2011 by Damon J.A. Goldstein

  Published by Phibes Phorever Publishing

  First Phibes Phorever Printing, February 2013

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN-13: 978-1482642544

  Printed in the United States of America

  Formulaic Hypotitheñai From The Dr. Anton Phibes Manifestos ‐ circa 1929

  Forward

  HE’S BACK AGAIN! – All Dr. Phibes Phans are as one in waiting to discover the secret story of Vulnavia and another reason why you all continue to show such a strong and loyal following.

  ‘Dr. Phibes Vulnavia’s Secret©ʹ reveals exactly how the beautiful and enigmatic mute known as Vulnavia survives a seemingly fatal raining shower of acid. Again travel back through time with the creator of both ‘Dr. Phibes’ and ‘The Cult‐Classic Dr. Phibes Series’, to the period betwixt and between ‘The Abominable Dr. Phibes’ and ‘Dr. Phibes Rises Again!’ and witness how Dr. Phibes uses his skilled trained musicians hands to manipulate and orchestrate the up until‐now un‐known Difference Engine, and the first stem cells discovered, to save his forever faithful Vulnavia’s almost‐human life. ‘Dr. Phibes Vulnavia’s Secret©ʹ in true‐to‐Phibes‐form is also stunningly a classic love story tempered by horrific tragedy as well as a classic horror story borne from the ultimate of human emotions – Love…and a little secret…

  ‐ Damon J.A Goldstein

  Dr. Phibes

  VULNAVIA’S SECRET

  BOOK III.V OF THE CULT‐CLASSIC

  DR. PHIBES SERIES WILLIAM GOLDSTEIN

  VULNAVIA’S SECRET

  Clouds scudded across the pitch‐black sky fitfully revealing a moon that seemed frightened by the evening chill.

  And the moon wasn’t even full. Scrub oat fields recently mowed made up this terrain which, a few scant miles from London Town might well have been on some Scottish heath far to the northwest.

  The roadway was mostly dry thanks to the wind, which never let up, blowing away the rain squalls as soon as they landed.

  It was a dark and stormy night. And there was singing, or so we thought. Singing here amidst the oat fields scrubby beneath the scudding clouds and the pitch‐black dome overall.

  Singing on a night like this? St. Daffodils for the Criminally Insane is a prison hospital; make no mistake about it. And despite its name, it is not some neglected pile dating from the XVIIth, century, or maybe the XVIIIth. Rather, it is a recent brick‐and stucco concoction featuring tight, small rooms, endless corridors and a lighting scheme that emphasizes dimness.

  Engineering cruelty, realized! White ‐coated lumpy shapes drift the hallways, flapping file folders at one another in a nod to their professional status. Streaming through these medicos in a crisp wash of petticoats are the senior and junior nurses, these two latter groups delineated by the length of their gowns. The long key chains swinging from their rope belts confirm that these ladies are jailers as well as caregivers. No need to dwell here on the subject of quality medical care meted out by a society intent on seeing justice served. The loud clatter of keys makes the point! The never‐ending screams and wailings of the prisoner/patients provide the counterpoint, all the more amplified, all the more tormented on this dark and stormy night.

  St. Daffodils is one of the few buildings on this rural countryside. You could mistake it for a farmer’s outbuilding, save for the metal‐sheathed cross that juts up from its façade. The bare glass bulbs on each corner do little to illuminate what the contractor did with the architect’s plans.

  Of course, no one is about this evening, the oat fields and the roadway threading through them deserted save for a distant speck, a speck that grows larger as it moves toward us, its needling sound rising in front like some miniature bow wave sharp and strong.

  Very skillfully it cuts the distance in half and in half again, piercing the night pastoral as the speck reveals itself: a motorcycle ‐ with sidecar ‐ managing the roadway cleanly, bike and driver as one, the crimson scarf about his neck signifying intent on this dark and stormy night.

  Bike and sidecar thump along the roadway, the weight of its craftsmanship giving as good as it gets from the pitted macadam, its grimy wheels signifying that this is no pleasure trip.

  A hard‐charger out on a mission.

  * * *

  Its sponsors had granted St. Daffodils one embellishment: a Bell Tower that fingered up into the country air. This tower or cupola, as the locals called it, was a simple octagon more squat than tall, and faced with the same red brick that covered its parent building. A conical she
et metal roof kept out the elements, but these had no trouble making their mark on the wrap‐around windows below. All in all this entire cupola was a nondescript add‐on to a very average‐looking building ‐ with one exception:

  The cat on the roof! That’s right, the local farmers would tell anyone passing through, there’s a cat up on the roof of St. Daffodils. All you gotta do is look up and if you listen strong enough, you can hear him laugh; more of a chuckle but a laugh just the same.

  Now country folk have their jokes and jibes just like city dwellers so they know all about the cat up on top of St. Daffodils. But the wayfarers were not privy to this knowledge and as it always happened, every motor car that was just passing through ‐ from the tinny coupe to the lumbering brougham ‐ had to stop square in front of the hospital to take in what they saw ‐ or thought they saw.

  Many didn’t even bother to pull off the gravel, stopping dead on the pavement to gawk up at the cupola which made for traffic jams on those rare spring days when the sun actually warmed things up into the 60’s and sometime the 70’s.

  So what did they see that caused all this commotion? It was a cat all right or more accurately, a cat’s head round and big as a bowling ball (but really bigger if you corrected for the distance). And the cat fanciers amongst these crowds knew right away that they were looking at one of the most famous and venerable members of the breed ‐ a Cheshire Cat, whose big bally head bounced and swung about inside the glass like some happy pinball, the sly smile on his face ever ready to break out laughing. You could hear him all the way down to Peckenham on a clear night.

  Chess (that’s what they called him) laughed so loud it brought tears to his eyes. Funny as this sounded, the night travelers never stopped to look up at the cat in the cupola. Were they afraid of what they might see? Who knows? What we do know is that there was a lot of speeding along that stretch of the two‐lane, especially around the midnight hour.

  More than anything else, this bobbling, smirking Chess looked a little bit crazy!

  The motorcycle glided over the last quarter mile until, veering off the roadway, it was lost on the dark side of the asylum.

  St. Daffodils had quieted down, the bedlam giving way to a scatter of moans. All the windows were dark save for the feeble flickering of the nurses’ station, a reminder that the criminals who were housed here were sick, stricken with an abundance of afflictions none of which lent them to conventional medical treatment.

  What is insanity? The yellowing globe above the building’s main entryway served as a welcoming of sorts to the rare nighttime visitor, mostly sheriffs escorting the newly convicted from the London Assizes. More distant jurisdictions also shipped their charges to St. Daffodils when they were too difficult to handle locally, the Carter from Colchester being the most notorious of the latter.

  This recent bridegroom, a big strapping fellow who was known as a ’comer’ in the local short‐haul business, had moved in with the in‐laws, where he and his bride shared an attic bedroom.

  His bride ‐ Leah was her name ‐ was an only child who never did enjoy the customary privileges of that singularity.

  Her parents, neither well‐to‐do nor paupers, made it very clear from the outset that they were not happy with this sudden encroachment, They really wanted to be rid of Leah finally and at last but now, instead of rejoicing in their long‐anticipated freedom, their household was groaning under the added weight of the newlyweds.

  The resulting squabbles were predictable: their outcome was not. Colchester dates back to Roman times. This medium‐ sized city (by today’s standards) flourished during the Industrial Revolution (if such can be said), where the income disparities quickly fixed the city’s residential zones.

  Leah’s folks lived in a row house, it and its neighbors framed in an unvarying palette of ochres, mauves and brick‐reds comprising a 20‐block enclave of prevailing, often desperately so, continuity.

  Folks hereabouts tended to their own business ‐ which is why the sudden onset of curses and slammed doors gave pause to the neighbors. The racket went on for several weeks without let‐up. Then, just as an agreement had been reached to call in the authorities, the disturbance stopped.

  The block settled into its normal routine, welcoming the newlyweds with faint indifference. The comings and goings of the carter’s truck summoned up a remembrance of things past amongst the local bankers, many of whom wore frock coats in honor of their 19th century forebears. Rising interest rates and the profits they would bring turned the discussions in more than a few boardrooms toward the lascivious.

  This carnal tension exploded when passersby alerted the Bobbies to the foul fumes emanating from the carter‘s truck. There, inside the rubber‐lined perishables chest in the back of the van, were Leah’s parents all cut‐up and neatly wrapped in butcher’s paper, the small parcels stacked in to the rim. Son‐in‐law would have gotten away scot‐free except he neglected to renew the dry ice inside the chest. The vaporized decomposition products went everywhere the van went.

  ‘Motorized Abattoir’ the headlines shrilled, quickly putting the pin to the industrial revolution boomlet and dispatching the murderous son‐in‐law to St. Daffodils with very little ado.

  His newly orphaned bride discreetly secluded herself for about a fortnight. Still young but not quite pretty, she sold her husband’s now infamous truck and invested the proceeds in her rejuvenescence (the modern word ‘makeover’ had not yet been coined).

  This included a trip to Paris and an extended stay in the Balkans after which she returned with a massive blonde coiffure burnt at the roots and a bosom that tested her two‐sizes‐too‐large bodice to the limit.

  Leah remained un ‐pretty!

  * * *

  Many silences sift from St. Daffodils at this late hour ‐ after 9PM being the usual late evening in most hospitals around the globe. These silences are actually the void left by the inmates’ shrieks and shouts that prevails above the nearby oat fields during the day like some agitated fog, the farmer’s complaints to the district council members falling on deaf ears for the usual tax reasons.

  The oats never seemed to mind. Their fields ‐ acres and acres of them ‐ spread their blankets of purple flowers all spring long, browning and graying over summer into a sort of sedge ready for the harvest, and a payday for the farmers despite St. Daffodils’ bothersome bedlam.

  The only night sound now ‐ a violin coming from inside the building ‐ but from whom, and how? Gliding across the crunchy gravel, the trike pulled to a halt on a light upswing near the side tradesmen’s entry. The biker let himself in through the door, which, like most doors in this rural region, is seldom locked.

  Turning a corner and then another in the half light, he came upon a corridor illuminated by infrequent scones that are so far apart that darkness ‐ or the pinchpenny utility bills ‐ were the permanent winners.

  A nun sits dozing at the nurses’ station halfway down the corridor. The biker, whose bearing is oddly familiar, approaches and pausing briefly, grips the nape of her neck below the carotids. Her dozing deepens.

  The violin surges as he turns into a short side corridor, his leathers creaking in reassuring counterpoint. Four doors, two on each side, line this corridor. The far door on the right is slightly ajar. Moving quickly, he glances into the room and steps inside.

  The nocturnal violinist, her head swathed in bandages, drops her bow and rises to greet the intruder, her muslin gown not quite concealing her youthful frame. He throws a cloak around her shoulders and leads her out of the room by her hand and down the corridors from whence he came.

  Once outside, he stations her in the sidecar and, resuming the driver‘s seat, starts off with a powerful chug. The trike thunders down the country road, the biker’s red crimson scarf streaming stiffly in the free night air while his passenger shows her joy in a rush of sign language.

  The motorcycle pulls to a halt on a pastoral knoll. The bright moon pokes through the scudding clouds as the
biker turns on the cycle’s radio.

  He plugs a cord into his neck‐vent, confirming what we already know, that he is indeed Anton Phibes. Dialing across several local stations until he reaches the desired wavelength, he looks across at his passenger who most certainly must be his assistant, Vulnavia. And who has started to unwrap the bandages from her face.

  Much of what he has to say is lost in the wind. His final phrase ‘free at last from death’s crude shores’ comes through just as Vulnavia strips away the last of her bandages. Now we see this once beautiful girl’s features revealed for the first time. Her skin is mottled with raw purple welts, her nose is a suppurated pustule, her jawbone pierces jaggedly through sunken cheeks and her eyes, once so limpid, are corrugated slits from which her still bountiful life flows.

  Phibes leans across and kisses her on the cheek. ‘Much work must be done, my faithful Vulnavia, to prepare her honeymoon precisely as she would dream.’ he murmurs.

  And before we can recover from this ghastly introduction, Phibes reaches under his chin and begins to pull away the cosmetic mask that covers his real face. It is a sight that shall forever etch our memories.

  Vulnavia takes his hand and kisses it. ‘To life, Vulnavia!’, he proclaims. ‘We all have had enough of death!’

  With an emphatic pumping of his left foot, Phibes starts up the trike and heads off down the highway. As the pair come barreling down the road, they pass a farmer driving his milk cart in the opposite direction. Slow to react, he finally screams as he views those in the trike.

  * * *

  He washed her down as soon as they got back to Maldine Square. She was shivering, her filthy tunic heaving with every staccato breath that she took.