Part 21: Big Rick '77

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Previously in the Vines Inquiry— Frank fondly recalled how his brother Dick would stand up for him in front of his parents’ mysterious dinner guests as they walked to the bottom floor of the Bramford University library. There, he and Harlow started watching the film reel he’d found in his father’s office. Younger versions of his mother, father and his Aunt Lemony filled the screen, waiting to begin…

With neither Vineswoman blocking the frame, Frank could see family portraits covered the walls of the eight-sided room, letting eager-eyed ancestors judge and support accordingly. 

Frank had gone through a brief phase in elementary school where he was determined to memorize the whole Vines line. He’d been inspired by a family tree project his teacher thought would be a fun, low-stress way to get everyone in the Thanksgiving spirit. Lil Frank went the historically-accurate route and made it an act of decimation.

What could have been a frivolous art and/or craft became work. A piece that must become his perfect magnum opus, at least for the fourth grade. This lasted for a month before he gave up after he kept getting confused with the first generation of Vineses on the island. Something about a disagreement in the record over who was brothers and not. 

Aside from the many portraits, the younger version of his parents brought in their ritualist mise en place. Standing lights with thick black cords running across the room and out the several doors that led to this chamber were all focused on a table. Their bright, almost clinical light, covered every inch. A record player, the one that still resided in their parlor, was pushed to one wall. The wooden table, covered in a white cloth, was in the center of the room and directly over a drain in the floor.

Rick sat on the only chair, still smirking as Rosalind and Lemony double-checked that the table was bolted to the ground. He adjusted a circular make-up mirror, angling it to better capture his striking jaw, and took a note in his compact, leatherbound notebook. 

“Nia, come check this,” Rosalind called to the person behind the camera.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said from off-screen in a thick Bay accent. 

Rosalind dug the toe of her shoe into the ground and tried to shake the table. It did not budge. 

“What the hell is that voice?” whispered Rick to Rosalind. The audio came in grainy, but clear. The table must have been mic’d. Rick undid the buttons on his shirt, deft movements that had inspired many a nocturnal grazing. 

“Something new she’s trying out.” Rosalind performed a similar stability check on a metal device that had been bolted to the table. Satisfied, she flattened a wrinkle in the tablecloth.

Off camera, Nia scoffed. “I didn’t realize science cared about appearances.” 

“If all we were doing is science, you’d be right.” 

Rosalind gripped the device’s base again, a rod just over a foot tall in the shape of a sagging Y. She shook it ferociously, but it held fast. “I still think we should get a thicker base. It’ll be safer.”

Lemony’s face paled at the halting news, but Rick just smirked again, tossing aside his shirt. 

“Why Rosa? Is that concern I detect?” Rick leaned back in the chair, thick forearms crossing a taut waist. 

Dick, thought Frank. He looks just like him. 

“Screws secure,” said Rosalind, turning to hide her smile. She gathered his shirt and saluted, the militaristic gesture especially mocking against her hair poof. She’d it tied with a black bow.

Nia snorted. “If something goes wrong and splatters him, it’s on you.”

“Were you always this dramatic?” Rick’s tongue lingered on the edge of his teeth like a wolf playing with its dinner. He turned to the camera and Nia behind. “A good splatter is the goal.” 

He winked and Nia giggled, an adolescent noise that immediately shed the sturdiness of her voice. Rosalind glared at the camera.

She did one more check over the table; adjusting the mirror, making sure it got Rick’s collar bones, pawing a few of the instruments, rearranging a needle or two before he shooed her. 

“It’ll be fine. Rochester and I have checked the records dozens of times.” 

“Then why does no one show any gifts?” said Nia. “Why didn’t we invite the rest of the Inquiry?” 

“Maybe they’re camera shy?” said Lemony, her perspective intoxicating even through time and projected light. 

“A fine hypothesis!” snapped Rosalind. She glared at the camera again and rubbed Rick’s shoulder. “No such thing as stupid questions, right?” 

“Correct, gorgeous. Let’s take a crack at answering one of them.” 

Rosalind turned away but Rick caught her hand and pulled her into his lap. He kissed her once, a hard peck, and twirled her back to her feet. Rosalind, Rosa, smoothed her skirt as she strut to the wall doing her best not to look longing. With a glance towards Lemony, her sister confirmed, “Camera’s rolling.”

“Screws are secure,” repeated Rosalind. 

“Everybody knows about the damn screws,” muttered Nia. Then, louder. “Does Rochester know his grad student is…”

“Quiet!” said Rosalind. “We’re on a schedule.” 

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Rick worked his jaw left and right before setting it on the iron Y. He winked at Rosalind, a gesture that lit her eyes, and she started to turn the crank on the side of the record player. The record sleeve crinkled as she placed the disc—Christmas candle red, if any color—on the turntable. She walked behind the camera, shooing Lemony to swap places. 

“This is insane. He is going to die,” said Nia through clenched teeth. 

“Only for a few minutes. The sacraments worked centuries ago. They’ll work now.” 

“They never worked! Don’t be stupid, or cock blind, for a minute. Please.” Nia’s tone changed from mocking to…perhaps not camaraderie; but legitimate concern. The softness that comes with not wanting someone, even your rival, to suffer unnecessarily. “This…This was fun for a while, but now we’ve got to stop. This is murder, Linda. You’re going to kill him trying to get one piece of Her and we need seven.” 

“No. That’s the whole point. Have you been paying attention at all? Or maybe you’ve gone blind staring at a cock that barely knows you exist? Again.” All the while, Rick tallied his tools, cataloging each and making quick scratch notes in his book. “It hasn’t worked in hundreds of years. There’s plenty of graves out back to prove it. But they’ve never had me before. Never had us. Now you can either get on board, or leave. The Inquiry is a family.”

Rick smiled at the camera and nodded.

“A family does anything for each other,” finished Rosalind. “No matter the cost.”

In a culmination of centuries, Lemony set the needle. She dictated the specifics for posterity. It was to be placed three grooves in at 193 degrees, where North at 0 degrees was true horizon for a Cancerean. The hours spent in the manor’s libraries. The midnight break-ins to professors’ offices overseas. It was all about to be worth it. 

A vinyl crackle filled the room—sounds like metacarpals snapping in a bonfire. The noise moved as wildfire, flooding the chamber, filling it so that the floor and walls hummed with the same undulating melody. The electric lights pulsed with the crackling. Each quarter-rotation of the record a beat of the noise’s heart. It all worked together, found step in time. The hum and crackle held hands, tap dancing along the myelin sheaths of the four of them in the room; and whatever else may have lingered there. 

Rick set to work. Across from him, out of focus next to the wall, Lemony swayed along to the music. Not voluntary motion. She had to constantly readjust her balance to stay standing in the shifting layers of actuality. He cleared his throat and threaded the first needle.

Long and curved, a needle that said “reupholstery” to Frank. Something he must have seen in his mother’s sewing room. The camera shook as Rosalind moved it closer. No one spoke. 

Frank squinted at the projection. The initial definition his mind made couldn’t be possible. First, because who the hell would do that to themselves; and second because Frank was sure his father wouldn’t be on that list, even if it existed. 

The thread showed up well on film. Not like the silken floss that had sliced his arm, but thick and black-grey. A witch’s yarn. Dead man’s thread. They all waited, near-frozen.

Listening. 

“What if it doesn’t come?” whispered Lemony. 

“Her Tears have been here for a day already,” said Rosalind. “We just need to unlock the door.” The static hum of the dead record churned on. The only other sound was the trickle of the projector in the library’s basement. Until: 

Da-da-dum, Da-da-dum. 

Rick’s eyes lit up, hungry like before. “Hello, darling.”

He leaned his head left, stretching out his neck; the ridge of his Adam’s apple caught in one of the spotlights. He pulled at the skin on the right of his trachea. It bloomed bright orange as the light pushed through from the back like a veiny flesh balloon. 

“Here we go then.”

Rick breathed out and slid the needle in. Frank thought he might just pierce it through, but pulling the skin taut had been about control. Rick smiled and the hum and crackle of the record surged the room until it felt like Frank was chin deep. There was a heightening tempo following his heartbeat. Sharper chimes. 

Rick locked eyes with Rosalind and pressed farther in, breathing out a heavy shoot of air as he did. The needle, at least five inches long, disappeared beneath his flesh, letting a few drops of blood loose. His eyes watered but stayed open and locked on Rosalind.

With gaping fervor, Rick checked his angle in the mirror and maneuvered the needle beneath his skin. When his hand shook, he paused, took a few deep breaths, and pressed again. The process was slow. Agonizing. But the reward. The gift for this sacrifice. Frank knew that’s what it was as sure as he knew he shouldn’t be watching this film. He could see it in their eyes.

Rosalind’s unblinking focus. Lemony’s hopeful anticipation. The reward would be immeasurable.

With a final press against his thumb pad, the point of the curved needle pierced from under Rick’s skin, from behind his trachea, on the other side of his throat. The flesh peaked up, slick with sweat in the studio lights, before the needle punched through with an audible pop. 

“That’s one.” Rick pulled the thread, first trying to hold back his cry but then letting out a wail. He pulled it taut, coughing and wincing at the pain that shuddering caused. The knot on the end of the thread absorbed a thick trickle of blood running down Rick’s throat. He signaled to Rosalind and she nodded, running to give the record player a few more cranks before she came over. 

Frank assumed they were done; a failed experiment in their youth. A personal MK Ultra with fewer victims. Instead, his mother pulled a leather strap from under the table and wrapped it tight around his father’s head, forcing his chin into the metal Y-stand. She buckled Rick in; stretched his neck long, forward and up. Frank’s own neck cramped at the sight. 

“Thanks, gorgeous,” said Rick, a tear falling down his face.

Unable to complete the action, he kissed the air in front of him as a few more tears came. Rosalind’s face was a mask. Whatever she was feeling had become worms slithering beneath a rock, unable to face the sun of what they were doing to Rick. What she was helping him do. 

“Okay, Rosa. Keep that record wound. This is going to take longer than I thought.” Rick picked up the needle and tugged on it once, ensuring the thread was tight before he moved back to the right side of his neck. 

Starting from just above his clavicle, Rick completed twelve horizontal stitches. He pushed the needle through each time on the right, gasping and crying out the farther along he went. He kicked at the table, shaking it in its moorings and yelped as the blood began to stain the white table cloth. He screamed to heaven and hell, cursed the pain and the cruel machinery of a human body. 

But not once did he ask for help. 

By the fourth stitch, his eyes grew wide and searching, as if he was looking far beyond the walls of this inner chamber. When Rick got to the top of his throat, he looped the thread under the top stitch and used it to pierce up and under his jaw. 

Frank couldn’t see much from the angle, but his gaping mouth went dry as he saw his father switch needles, piercing his tongue too many times over before letting the loose threads hang out of his mouth. Threads wound behind Rick’s trachea, over his jaw bone and through his tongue, dotting the table with pink blood that had mixed with spittle. It was a maniacal game of Cat’s Cradle that he’d implanted, and Frank saw no way his father could untangle himself.

Moaning and weeping along with the barely audible tinkling of bells, Rick gathered the threads in one hand and as gently as he could and wrapped them around the metal Y-stand. When they were secured around the base, he looked at Rosalind. She waited a long while, her deep breaths scratchy on the tape. 

“Rosalind…,” said Nia. They’d stopped cranking the turntable a long time ago, but still the record spun. The needle rode the same groove in an impossible circle.

Rosalind cleared her throat, and said it quiet. Her sorrow was held back by only one thing—a substance thin as a church wafer and thick as the walls of St. Peter’s Basilica. 

Faith, Frank thought. 

“Screws secure,” she said.

Rick looked to his future wife, her face a crippled mess of fear, and winked. Still staring at her, with both hands on the table, he stood. Quickly, forcefully; pushing himself back. Everyone’s eyes stayed on the Y-stand through the wet crunch. Where else could they dare to look? 

The bells immediately cut off and the sounds of Rick falling took over. There was a gurgling, but something harder too. Leather snapping against the hard floor. Lemony’s shrieking got picked up every now and again. 

The Y-stand shook against its supports, wagging back and forth like a metal pole clanging out in a silent playground. It sped up as it lost momentum, the force of Rick’s tearing taken back by the stifled room. No one moved until it stopped. The only sound was an oozing. Uneven squirts. The threads were long enough that whatever misery hung on their ends swayed beneath the table, out of view. 

“What do we do now?” said Lemony, finally. Before Rosalind could chide her, the record skipped. A cartoonish scratching that bludgeoned the deep-sea humming. Everyone turned on reflex. A shame, from Rick’s point-of-view.