Succulent Prey

Professor Locke had been on the telephone for hours and was amazed at what he was hearing. ‘You mean it’s possible?’

‘Theoretically? Yes. But there’s simply no proof. And you say a college kid came up with this theory?’

‘He claims to suffer from it.’

‘Fascinating.’

‘They think he may have killed someone. Ate them alive.’

‘My God!’

Doctor Wilfred Dougherty worked in the Neurology department at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Locke’s call had been transferred to him after the professor had been laughed at or hung up on by nearly everyone else.

‘You know, there was a police forensic psychologist who put forth a theory that brain trauma in the early developmental years could be found in as many as 73 percent of all serial killers. You could see increased activity in the limbic system of the brain. It even showed up on CAT scans.’

‘So what happened with that?’

‘There were an equal percentage of normal, non homicidal people in the community who showed the same brain abnormalities. Almost every kid falls off a swing or gets hit in the head with a baseball at some point. But they don’t all grow up to be serial killers. But this is the first time I can recall hearing a theory of a blood borne pathogen that affects the limbic system so severely that it stimulates the human prey-drive, basically creating a human predator. It’s like something from a horror novel.’

‘But you say it’s possible?’

‘Well, the area of the brain that we call the limbic system, actually the limbic basal-ganglia thalamocortical circuit or visceral brain, controls our flight-or-fight emotions as well as our sex drives. It’s involved in storing memories and creating emotions and is thought to play a central role in processing all impulse related information. A disease that could affect the limbic system and increase serotonin levels in the amygdala, the rage center, could lead to severe rage impulse related disorders perhaps severe enough to account for ninety-nine percent of all serial killers. Add to that the trauma of having been assaulted by a serial killer in the first place, with the virus that his body fluids passed on to you affecting the hippocampus where that memory is stored, and you could easily have a situation in which one serial killer creates another simply by biting him. But all that hinges on the existence of a disease that could affect the amygdala in this way. So far there’s no proof that such a thing exists.’

‘Shit.’ It was all the professor could think to say. ‘Could it be cured? I mean, if it existed?’

‘The brain is a tricky place. Brain cells are the only cells in your body that don’t reproduce. Once they’re dead they’re gone for good. This fragility tends to make any changes to the neurological system rather permanent.’

‘You said that an increase in serotonin levels might be responsible for the violent sexual behavior? It’s an impulse-control disorder, in fact an obsessive compulsive disorder. Only in this case it’s the compulsion to kill. They use serotonin inhibitors to treat other addictive compulsive behaviors, drug abuse, alcoholism, even compulsive gambling. This is basically another addiction we’re speaking of, an addiction to sadistic sexual homicide. Why couldn’t it be treated the same way as other addictions?’

‘I thought of that, and theoretically it would work. If the rest of the theory held up, then the administering of serotonin reuptake inhibitors should do the trick. Unfortunately, the success rate at treating addictions with psychotropic drugs has not been encouraging. Like all recovery techniques, we found that it only works if the subject wants it to. But like all addictions there’s a reward attached to it. Drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual addiction, compulsive shopping or gambling, and serial homicide. In the addictive personality, these behaviors give them a high that’s almost irreplaceable. They do it because it feels good. In many cases it’s the only thing in their lives that feels good to them. We would in effect be asking them to give up that feeling of euphoria for a life of relative boredom. They may not want to do that, no matter how many drugs you pump them full of.’

Professor Locke thanked the doctor and hung up. He sat in the dark for hours wondering what to do. Then he sat down at the computer and began trying to find out all he could about Joseph Miles. He began by logging on to the university database and searching through his school records. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but if Joseph believed that he was afflicted with this disease then it followed that there must have been a point at which he would have contracted it, meaning he himself must have been victimized by a serial killer.

It didn’t take the professor long to locate the anomaly he was searching for. It was in his elementary school records. Back in fifth grade, Joseph Miles had been excused from school for three months due to ‘. . . severe medical and emotional trauma …’ The professor then went to the website for the local newspaper, the Seattle Ledger, to check for any articles that might coincide with that date. He found the connection in a sensational headline that electrified the hairs on his neck.

TEN YEAR OLD BOY SURVIVES CHILD MURDERER!

Last month, a ten-year-old boy, whose identity is being protected due to his age, was discovered bleeding badly from several stab wounds, apparently the victim of a violent sexual assault. Police now have a man in custody that they say matches the description the young boy gave to the police.

Seventeen-year-old Damon Trent was arrested yesterday on suspicion of the rape and murder of six other young boys in the Seattle, Washington area. When the police entered Trent’s home to execute a search warrant the remains of three of the missing boys were found in his basement in what witnesses described as ‘vats of blood.’ Further investigation uncovered several containers filled with blood as well as a bottle in which blood had been combined with red wine apparently to improve the taste.

It is now believed that the boy who was attacked last month may be the only surviving victim of this vicious child killer. In a press conference following the arrest of Damon Trent, Detective Wayne Williams stated that the ten-year-old boy was ‘. . . most likely the killer’s first victim. His savagery increased with each subsequent attack.’ When asked about reports that Trent claimed to be a vampire who gained power by drinking his victim’s souls through their blood the detective declined to comment.

The professor inhaled deeply as he read further reports of Damon Trent’s arraignment and trial and finally his sentence to a hospital for the criminally insane in Tacoma, Washington. If Joseph really believed that there was some correlation between this attack and his own dementia, then he might be going back to Washington to confront Trent.

‘They got to you too, huh?’ Professor Douglas interrupted, standing in the doorway and smoking his pipe in a deliberately professorial pose. Locke winced as if struck and jerked back in his chair.

‘Jesus, man! You scared the shit out of me!’

‘Sorry. Those detectives visited you too, I see.’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’re pretty good at laying the guilt on.’ Douglas swaggered into the room, still puffing on his pipe. ‘So what did you find?’

‘It looks like Joseph survived an attack by a serial killer. You know about his theory that serial killers are the result of a transmittable disease?’

‘Yeah. He was asking me about how vampires and werewolves transmit their curse and how to cure it. Oh my God! I told him the only way to cure the vampire’s curse was to kill the head vampire.’

‘That’s about what I figured he was up to.’ Locke turned his computer screen toward Professor Douglas as a new headline flashed on the screen:

Vampire Killer Found Not Guilty by Reason Of Insanity

‘He’s going to kill the head vampire.’