A Wolf Stalking: A Supernatural Thriller by Andy Graham

Author:Andy Graham [Graham, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub

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It was a theatre of sorts, lit by the pale, flickering shadows of more gas lanterns. These, too, were shaped like hands. Uniform, this time, with upturned palms, finger tips and thumb pressing into each other. Flames danced on their nails. One was different, it was closed into a fist, a flame dancing on the extended middle finger. Another time, Joe might have chuckled. They were standing in an aisle that cut through several semi-circular rows of seats. They were the kind that were on springs and snapped up when no one was sitting in them. The mechanism was broken in some and they stood up at random angles. From where he stood, it looked like the gap-toothed grin of a giant. He descended the steps, noting the dust-free seats and desks of the lower rows. The clanking noise of Lois’s chains disturbed the graveyard silence as she followed.

The rows funnelled down to a central space which held two tables on a podium, not dissimilar to the ones now burning in the chamber they had left. The first held a multi-layered box that fanned out to reveal a collection of surgical tools, twisting steel and curved edges worthy of the real monster in Frankenstein, its creator. Next to them was a thick wooden plinth that was chained to the floor. The surface was covered by a sheet that was covered in red blotches. “What is this place?” Lois whispered.

“An autopsy theatre.” Joe replied. He tweaked back a pair of thick curtains at the back of the room. They smelt of mothballs and hid a door. “They were a common part of teaching hospitals. Still are in some places. A room,” he said, gesturing, ”where professors can impress their knowledge upon their followers. Or entertain the masses in some cases. He or, on rare occasions, she would have waited behind that door to make a grand entrance. I suspect that in certain eras, had a woman been doing the demonstration, she would have been treated as much of an oddity as the body.”

“Wait, you said ‘entertain’?”

“Can’t you smell it?”

The room stank of sordid pleasures. People’s need to watch pain, justified by the flimsy excuse of education. He had visited a dissection lab once, a medic friend had snuck him in. Joe had found the experience surreal and humbling, especially when he had seen a tattoo of blue numbers on one of the cadaver’s arms. That had raised any number of questions he wasn’t sure he had wanted answered. But this place was wrong. Lois trembled and reached for his hand, the lesser of two evils. “What’s that?” she asked. “Under the sheet…”

But Joe had already moved, their fingers linked as their arms stretched out, neither prepared to let go of the lifeline that joined them. He peeled back the fabric. Strapped to the surface, with thick leather bands and stained buckles was something that shattered Joe’s heart.

It was a thing that belonged in a black and white photo, a creature that private bidders would pay a fortune to exhibit in their personal zoos.

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