Thomas O`Callaghan - The Screaming Room

Adjusting the flames on the gas canisters beneath tubs of simmering frankfurters, the vendor hadn’t noticed he had customers. A high-pitched voice startled him.

“Say, ma man, how much you charge for yo hot dogs?” It was the voice of a gruff-looking wiry-haired youth. Another slovenly teen crowded his cart.

“Two dollars,” the Pakistani merchant stammered.

“Man, that be highway robbery,” said the youth, flashing a sardonic grin. “Freddie, don’t you think ma man here is dissin’ us?”

“I don’t set the prices. I just sell the stuff,” said the vendor.

The tormentor’s smile, conveying its veiled threat, froze. The youth’s switchblade was pressing hard against the vendor’s waist.

“Please, please. I want no trouble,” pleaded the vendor.

“Yo, ma man,” the second youth taunted. “Leroy here is a mean mother and there’d be no stoppin’ him if he gets pissed. Tell ya what we’re gonna do. I’ll tell Leroy to lose the blade while you hand over yo cash. You catchin’ my drift?”

With unsteady hands, the Pakistani rummaged through his pockets and produced a handful of singles.

“That’s all you got?” squawked Leroy, grabbing hold of the loot.

“My shift just started.”

“You shittin’ me?”

“I am a truthful man. My shift just started. Those singles are mine.”

“Not any more,” said Leroy, jamming the fistful of dollars into the pocket of his oversized trousers.

“Yo, Leroy. It be time to split,” said the second culprit, his ears detecting the distinctive sound of an approaching moped.

As the pair of petty thieves strutted away from the shaken merchant, the hot dog vendor flagged down the scooter-mounted security guard.

“I’ve been held up!” he cried, pointing his finger in the direction of the fleeing thieves.

The guard revved up his scooter and took off after the pair. When the two robbers caught sight of their pursuer, they sprinted up a grassy knoll that was bordered by a ten-foot-high steel fence.

“C’mon, Freddie, we gotta get outta the park,” hollered Leroy, climbing to the top of the fence and hurling himself over, dropping twenty-five feet on the other side, where the fence was supported by fifteen feet of standing concrete.

“Wait for me,” Freddie shouted, hurrying up behind him.

Midway up the fence, Freddie glanced over his shoulder. The security guard had parked his scooter at the bottom of the knoll and was marching up the hill, nightstick in hand. Eyeballing the guard, the fleeing thief climbed higher. He froze when he reached the top. On the expanse below, he saw four black baboons baring saber teeth and advancing toward Leroy, who had hit the ground hard and was now scrambling on all fours. As Freddie watched in horror, the largest primate pounced on his doomed friend. The animal’s canines tore into Leroy’s flesh, lacerating both tendon and bone. Leroy let out a bloodcurdling scream as fluid from his punctured lungs filled his trachea. In the seconds that followed, the baboons tore Leroy’s body to shreds.

It took nearly an hour for three animal handlers, armed with stun guns, to corral the baboons and force them back into their cave.

By now, a handful of uniformed policemen, EMTs, and a plainclothes detective had arrived. They joined three coroner’s assistants who were busy scooping up Leroy’s remains and stuffing them into a body bag. The curious baboons watched the activity through a thick metal grid that sealed the mouth of their sanctuary.

Detective Luis Raios, dispatched from the Fifty-second Precinct, had never entered a wild animal’s den before. He felt jittery at the sight of the four baboons, their faces pressed hard against the steel grid, examining his every move. He knew he was an intruder, trespassing on their limited kingdom. He walked toward a cluster of boulders in the center of the expanse, aware of the anxious primate eyes of the baboons. In that instant, Detective Raios felt what he had never felt before in his metropolitan life. Like prey. He saw in those sets of sienna brown eyes the impulse to kill, and he knew he was the target of that impulse.

“And what do we have here?” he muttered, slipping on a latex glove before reaching in, behind the boulders.

He had come upon an odd item for the baboons’ lair: a ladies’ brown high-heel shoe. Rotating the shoe in his hand, he deciphered remnants of letters on its inner side: G cc. S ze 6?. Gucci? Size 6 ?? He examined a dark stain on the shoe’s heel. Baboon shit…or human blood? he wondered.

And where was the other shoe? He scanned the immediate area. Nothing. Cautiously, he approached a second cluster of rocks that adjoined the baboons’ quarters. A putrid stench assailed him.

“Don’t they ever hose out that cave?” he yelled to the trio of animal handlers.

“A crew goes in there once a month,” said one, moseying on over to where the detective was standing.

“Don’t you smell that?” Raios winced, popping a handful of tic tacs into his mouth.

“Whoa!” the handler gasped.

“I’d better check out that cave,” said Raios. “Any chance of moving those overgrown monkeys and raising the gate?”

“But we just got them in there!”

“Then I suggest you get them out.”

The overlook, west of the grassy knoll, was now congested with spectators. When the immediate area was cleared, the animal handler approached a small metal box embedded in a concrete wall near the baboons’ cave. Using a brass key, he unlocked the box and depressed a button inside. The gate on the mouth of the cave went up.

“Detective, you may want to stand behind me,” the handler suggested.

“You got that right,” said Raios.

Though the gate had been lifted, the baboons remained inside.

“They waiting for some sort of invitation?”

“C’mon, Whiskers…c’mon, Plato…come on out, Joe…Figaro, c’mon. It’s time to play,” coaxed the handler.

“Are they always this shy?”

“Never.”

“Keep tryin’.”

“Hey guys, the rain’s over. C’mon now, I got a handful of Good ’n’ Plenty. They’re your favorite.” He shook his hand, rattling the sugar-coated candies. “Come and get them.”

The baboons stood defiantly inside.

“Maybe they lost their sweet tooth,” said Raios.

The handler approached their hollow and sprinkled the pink and white confections on the ground just outside the mouth of the cave.

Nothing happened.

“They’re not goin’ for it,” said Raios.

“These things always work. There’s something really wrong here.” The handler stepped back. “Okay, have it your way, guys.”

With Raios in tow, the handler sauntered over to the metal box and depressed a red button.

“I’m setting off an ultrasonic sound inside their cave. It’s a frequency we won’t hear. But it’s like fingernails on a blackboard to them. It’ll get ’em outta there in a hurry!”

“In what kind of mood?” Raios grumbled as the pack of baboons let out a ferocious growl. “That howling doesn’t make me feel too comfortable.”

The four primates lumbered out of the cave and scrambled for the Good ’n’ Plenty.

“These the same guys that ripped apart that kid an hour ago?” Raios asked, eyes fixed on the docile foursome.

“The very same.”

“Then I’m glad I’m in here with you.”

The two other handlers netted the baboons.

“Detective, the cave’s all yours,” the lead handler announced.

“I hope ya got some of those candies left. That smell is only gonna get worse inside and I’m fresh outa tic tacs.”

The handler tossed Raios the near-empty box.

Armed with a Parks Department flashlight, a mouthful of licorice, and a hunch, Raios approached the cave. Was it merely the stench of the baboons’ habitat that assaulted his sinuses, restricted his breathing, and filled him with nausea? Or was it something else?