Ike Hamill - The Vivisectionist

“Holy fuck,” Stephen gasped, he glanced at Jack who sat slack-jawed, eyes locked on the video. “That kid is naked. That can’t be cable.”

The boy appeared young — younger than Jack and Stephen, and he was bound to the chair at his wrists, ankles, and around his torso. His painted skin resembled the painting on the wall in the drawing room — he had an anatomical drawing on his skin.

“Nope,” said Jack, “not cable. That’s Gabe Vigue — my neighbor’s kid.”

“What?” Stephen jumped up. “That's the kid who's been missing all this time? He’s still alive — we’ve got to help him.”

“Hold up — not necessarily,” said Jack. “It could just be a tape.”

“Yes, okay, true,” said Stephen. “Let’s go get an adult — one of your parents, or that kid’s dad or something.”

Jack didn’t react to the suggestion at first, then he tore himself away from the video and looked at Stephen. “Wait now. That’s not smart at all.”

“Why not?” Stephen challenged.

“We don’t have any evidence of anything, for one. Except for breaking and entering, we’ve got tons of physical evidence of that,” said Jack. “What are we going to say? We broke into this place for weeks and then saw a blurry overhead shot of a kid on a nineteen-inch TV? Who’s going to believe that?”

“We have to do something, Jack. If that’s the kid, then what if he’s still alive and we don’t help him?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, we’ll try to help him,” Jack reasoned. “Or, if we can come up with a way to prove that he’s here, then we can go get the cops.”

“Alright, but we have to have a deadline,” said Stephen. “I say if we don’t find anything by tomorrow then we have to tell someone.”

“Yeah, okay,” agreed Jack. He leaned over to the remote mounted on the nightstand and changed the channel. He surfed up through the rest of the channels until he looped back around. “Maybe we should watch this for a bit to see if there are any clues.”

“I think that’s a waste of time,” replied Stephen. “How much time do we have before we have to leave?”

“For what?” asked Jack.

“To get back for lunch — your mom said.”

“Oh yeah,” Jack consulted the clock on his phone. “About forty-five minutes.”

“Let’s see what else we can find,” said Stephen.

“Maybe we should split up,” offered Jack.

“No way,” said Stephen.

After switching off the television, Jack stood up and joined Stephen, who headed for the door. Stephen put his hand on the door and then paused. “I want to see something,” he said to Jack. He crossed the typical-looking hotel room again to the curtains on the far wall. They looked like they might hide floor-to-ceiling windows, but when Stephen pulled them aside he revealed a crude brick wall. The mortar was slopped between the bricks and spilled on the carpet in several places.

Stephen caught Jack again at the door and they headed into the hallway. They tried each door, Jack taking the right-hand of the hall and Stephen taking the left. All the doors were locked until they got to the end. Jack’s last door was open. Instead of a number next to the frame, this one said “Vending” and showed an illustration of a glass filled with ice cubes. The door opened out and Jack pulled the handle revealing a small room with several machines, fluorescent lights, and a tile floor.

“Now what?” said Stephen, walking past Jack into the vending room. Jack followed him in and let the door close behind them. “Wait! The door.” yelled Stephen. It was too late, the door closed behind Jack.

“What?” said Jack. He backed up a step and opened the door a crack. “It’s fine — it didn’t lock or anything,” he said.

“Okay — I just want to be careful,” said Stephen.

Together, they looked at the machines. The small room contained an ice machine, a soda machine, and a machine that dispensed snacks, gum, and candy. The soda and candy machines were lit up and the ice machine hummed softly. Jack pressed the lever on the ice machine and a small handful dropped into the basin below the dispenser. Pressing a button on the soda machine caused the display to light up with “1.50” for a few seconds.

“Expensive,” Jack said.

“So, dead end?” asked Stephen.

“Look at the floor,” said Jack.

Black, parallel scuff marks marred the floor in front of the soda machine. Stephen dropped to the floor and pressed the side of his face to the tile so he could see under the machine.

“Help me pull,” he said to Jack. Stephen sat up, braced his feet against the snack machine, and pulled on the bottom of the soda machine. Jack pulled from the left side, about halfway up. The machine slid across the tile: it stood on plastic pads.

When they pulled the soda machine out past the faces of the other machines, they found a large hole in the dusty wall behind.

“Pull a little more,” said Stephen. Jack stood on the left side of the machine and Stephen on the right. They pulled until the machine hit the far wall, but that only gave them ten inches of clearance. Jack squeezed through the gap and then Stephen followed him from his side. The dust on the floor showed a path of many footprints — back and forth through the grime. The wall had an egg-shaped hole, about four-feet high.

They had to pull out their flashlights again.

Jack stepped through the hole first. He found himself in a dirty passage inside the walls. He shone his light around and took in his surroundings.

“It’s like a secret passage,” said Jack. “Almost like the attic space.”

Stephen ducked through the opening and agreed, “Yeah, just like it.”

The passage led off to the right and then turned right.

“We must be behind one of the other rooms,” said Jack.

Light came through a small hole on his right, about shoulder level. Jack crouched down and looked through it.

“What is it, another hotel room?” asked Stephen.

“Yeah, but it’s got a bunch of books in it,” Jack replied.

“Let me see,” said Stephen.

Jack stepped aside and Stephen put his eye up to the hole. It looked like the mirror of the room they had been in before, but from the back. At the far end he saw the inside of a hotel door. The room still had beds, but bookcases took up every other section of wall. About half of the shelves contained hardcover books and the other half had journals.

“I wonder why the light is on,” whispered Stephen. “Do you think someone is in there?”

“Where? In the bathroom?” asked Jack. “You can see the bathroom door is open and it doesn’t look like there’s a light on in there.”

“Shhh. Yeah, but maybe someone is hiding below this hole,” Stephen pointed down to the wall in front of him.

“Nah,” said Jack. “Let’s see where this goes.”

Stephen turned away reluctantly. If he pulled his eye away, he thought he might see someone looking back at him, so he backed up very slowly.

“Come on,” Jack called from up ahead. Stephen rushed to catch up and get back in the protective bubble of Jack’s confidence.

The next ray of light came from the left side. Jack smiled as he looked through the hole.

“Well, what is it?” asked Stephen.

“You look, but I think it’s the room we saw in the video,” answered Jack, excited.

“Really?” Stephen asked. He approached the hole cautiously, not sure he wanted to see what was inside.

Jack was right, it did look a lot like the room from the video: the tile, and the blue counters with white cabinets behind. But he didn't see a chair or a boy, and those things dominated his memory of the video.

“Could be, but it’s hard to say,” said Stephen.