Chapter 42
Doctor Bill Havenga stood beside Willow, willing himself to keep his hands still. He hated the idea of working on another human without the numbing serum. But she insisted she’d need to be fully aware of everything that was going on.
He’d tied up her long blonde hair, and at her request, had sat her up with a sketchpad and pencil on her lap. He assured her she didn’t need it and that the images of her thoughts and memories would display on the monitors. She had smiled at him and said, “This is my monitor.” Gesturing to the sketch pad.
Standing beside the bed his hands rested on his chin, he asked, “What is it you need to find, I mean the objective of this for you is what exactly?”
She swallowed, ashamed of the answer she was about to give. “I get these daydreams or hauntings from the man who, for a lack of the right phrase, donated his heart to me.”
He pulled a face. “This man in your head, links to Johan’s killer how?”
“That’s what we need to find out. He might lead us to the man behind Doctor Vermaak’s murderer, and missing woman, and perhaps his copycat killer.” She sniffed, her eyes a glimmer with the possibilities of what she could discover. She felt almost, for the first time purposeful.
Bill adjusted his hat, “Are you saying you have the heart of a killer?
She looked down and nodded while flicking the pencil on the pad. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, biting back tears before saying. “I guess I was chosen.”
To that he said nothing.
She started to doodle on the paper before her, as if to warm herself up. “A man of science can’t understand.”
“Maybe I do, a little too well” he took his spectacles form his face and cleaned them with his shirt.
She snickered, “I guess you did invent this machine, so I take it back.”
He stood behind her and took the metallic cap, moving it into place, the needles an inch away from her skull. He leaned over and closed the door with a remote. He knew she’d scream, and he didn’t want the neurotic sister running in and disturbing them. Disruption of an individual whilst a download was happening from the human brain could be fatal.
Willow pulled the blanket up to her chest. “Bill?”
“Yes, Willow?”
“Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
Willow raised her hands to place them above her head, and then rested them on Bill’s hands when he hesitated to place the metal cap. “It’s okay.” She told him.
“It’s going to hurt you.”
She pushed down on his hands and together, they inserted the needles into her skull. She winced, as a crown of blood trickled down her forehead, but she never screamed.
He gave her a few seconds, if not a minute or two before he asked. “Do you see him?” he asked, taking a cloth to wipe her face before walking over to the bank of blank monitors.
“Not yet.”
He adjusted something on the cap, but still no images came.
“Maybe he knows what we are about to do,” Willow suggested.
The doctor adjusted a few more buttons on the side of the cap.
“What about the water,” she suggested.
Bill rubbed his chin. “Come again?”
“The sound of dripping water gets him mad, if we can turn a tap just enough to cause an annoying drip…” she recalled.
Bill went over to the tap in the corner of the room and turned it just enough so it dripped slowly into the metal basin. He had barely turned back around when Willow shouted at him. “Stop that. Turn it off!”
He jerked in surprise at her sudden outburst.
As his hand touched the tap she said, “No. No. Don’t, he’s trying to stop me. Keep it going, I have him right where I want him.”
He watched as a Willow started to sketch. After a moment, his eyes darted to the monitor.
“Interesting,” he said, starting to take notes himself.
He recorded the footage on the screen and watched her intensely through the eyes of a girl staring at herself in the mirror. He recognized her as Lorel Palmer. She’d been one of the most famous actresses of his generation and gained even more fame when she was brutally murdered by a serial killer. Holy crap, he thought to himself, she had the killer’s heart that killed Lorel Palmer!
He watched through a haze visions on the screen as Lorel was signing up for counseling at Memorial Hospital - a young man with dark eyes introduced himself to her. Skipping forward into another memory was the same man and they were in group counseling session together. A while later, her reflection is in a car window and she looks older, her hair is a bit darker and the guy beside her in the car had a massive tattoo of a heart on fire across his chest.
Willow’s voice came from behind him. “I knew him.”
Bill turned to observe her. She was in some kind of trance. Hurriedly, he turned his camera on to record her.
“It’s Lorel, she’s here.”
Her hands flew up to her ears, with the pencil still clutched between her fingers. “The noise, the noise, I can’t take it.”
He didn’t understand it at all, his hands shaking a little afraid.
“That noise, like monster about to devour me.” She looked up at Bill, recognition in her eyes once more as Lorel was pushed from her mind. “It’s the fan I heard in the basement of the hospital. They’re in that basement of Mercury Memorial.”
He spun to the monitor of her displayed visions thought the eyes of murder victim Lorel Palmer. Now he was getting excited—he had no idea this would work so well. The vision was coming out blurry, like looking at it from under water or through tears. The ground of the room had been torn up and there was a shovel at her feet. Across the room a door with the radiation symbol on it. Just off to the corner, he saw what Lorel had seen before she died; A line of bodies, all girls; their corpses had been cut open from chest to hip and disemboweled.
He gagged at the sight of the vision.
“You killed them, Valmer!” Willow screamed though a fit of tears, grasping at the blanket. She broke free from the trance and started writing on the sketch she’d been busy with and wrote a name: Delgados.
Willow stared at the sketch saying. “There is someone with Valmer, watching him. No, not one, but two Delgados.”
Willow gave a loud sigh, breathed out and the pencil fell to the ground as she said, “Got you!”
“Willow?” Bill got closer as she collapsed to the bed. He felt for a pulse and discovered that she was just sleeping.
As she fell into a deep sleep, the monitor showed nothing, just quiet. She looked so peaceful. He tucked her in and took the sketch from her. It was of two faces, similar in features. Perhaps brothers, or a father and his son. Below the faces was the name Delgado family. He wanted to remove the cap, but instead injected her with the numbing serum, waiting a few seconds before removing it, not wanting to cause this young woman any more pain. From the sketch that was so well drawn it was positively haunting, he got a shiver. From dark intense lines he felt the anger, the sorrow, evil and so much pain.