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.
“ Time to cut,” he said as he began the incision with the scalpel. Her screams heightened at the scalpel's kiss, which brought the blood. Outside, a train screamed by as if on cue, drowning her out. Then she fainted. He eased back on his knees vulturelike, then he continued with the operation.
He hadn't known whether he could perform the operation on a living person that first time, back in Richmond, Virginia; but now, with his fourth victim in his complete power, held as she was to the van floor, it certainly presented itself as the thing to do again, to add to his collection. Why he wanted her brain in his hands, or what he might do with it, once he had it removed, he had not known the first time he had severed a living, still-pulsating brain from a person. But now he knew that his own brain wanted them. “Don't you understand, Winona?” he asked. “Your power source will join with mine. I know it's in there somewhere.” He caressed her head, her hair, her brow. “You're never going to be alone. You'll be with the rest of us. We'll all be one.
…” he told her even though she'd swooned into unconsciousness. “Too bad I can't hold it up to your eyes for you to see before your last breath. Maybe then you'd believe me.”
Phillip had taught Grant well. He was coming to accept what he was. As he worked the handheld, relatively small electric bone cutter, the saw wheel whirred and screeched. The sound lulled him into the thought of how he had entrapped her, using her own childish naivete against her.
Grant had been cruising by a residential home in south Georgia when he had spotted Winona getting into a car with a young man. He had followed as she and the boyfriend went to a dance spot called Sandman's. On the dance floor, he got close enough to see it in her eyes, that she was one of them-the virtuous chosen. She smiled at him, and he nodded casually. Having a beer at the bar, he watched and waited, patient and vigilant. He soon realized that the couple was not getting along. When she bolted from the dance floor and her boyfriend followed, so did Phillip.
The girl and her boyfriend appeared to be in their early twenties as they stood arguing in the dimly lit parking lot.
He stayed at a safe distance to watch their argument escalate while other couples politely ignored the discord and passed by-the comings and goings of any nightclub. Phillip saw many underage teens playing at being older, and he worried about looking too out of place here, too old for the general clientele.
Then he saw the girl storm off alone down the street and away from the club, leaving her vulnerable. He watched her boyfriend rush to his car, peel off and go right past her, slowing only to call her a bitch, not stopping.
Returning to his van, Phillip-or the thing Grant had become-followed her progress. Phillip got into his van and made his way toward his prey.
She had been drinking heavily at the club. Now she was hitchhiking for a ride home. He closed the distance between them, and in a moment he stopped alongside the young woman. “Need a lift?” he asked, smiling wide.
At first she held back, but then she half stumbled to the window, slurring her words as she spoke. “How far you going down Turnbull Boulevard?”
“ As far as you need me to, darlin'. You came off a pretty bad scene back there at Sandman's.”
“ You saw that?” she asked.
“ Bad scene,” he repeated. “Been there, done that more than I care to say. Guess we all have. But it'll look better to you in the morning. Look, I'd be happy to get you home.”
She stopped to stare at him intently, studying his features.
“ I'm just a little wasted,” he added, “but not so much I can't drive.”
He wasn't entirely a stranger to her. “Didn't I see you inside Sandman's?” she asked. “I thought you must
