S15E20 - "Exsanguination" - Horror Hill

Horror Hill — A Horror Fiction Anthology and Scary Stories Series Podcast

Investigative reporter Avery Asbury goes undercover at a high-paying plasma clinic called Caduceus to expose potential exploitation of donors. Her investigation quickly uncovers a disturbing pattern of

Key takeaways

• Reporter Avery Asbury signs up for Caduceus clinic's $1,000 first-month plasma donation program to investigate potential donor exploitation.
• Facial recognition software reveals that multiple Caduceus staff members, including Dr. Galashvili and technician Davy, match memorial pages of deceased individuals.

Main topics

• Undercover investigative journalism
• Medical ethics and organ harvesting

Notable quotes

"Doing the right thing for money is still doing the right thing."

Conclusion

The episode delivers a tightly paced horror narrative that explores the

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Speaker 1 (0:11) Turning dreams into direction. Speaker 1 (0:17) Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. Speaker 1 (0:23) So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond borders. Speaker 3 (1:20) Disclaimer. Horror Hill is a horror anthology podcast bringing you scary stories from all corners of the internet and beyond. As such, certain stories include content that some listeners might find offensive. Listener discretion is advised. Speaker 3 (1:42) Good evening, friends, and welcome back to Horror Hill. I'm the air bubble in your IV line, Eric Peabody. Tonight, I've got another story for you from Micah Edwards, continuing our special feature on this delightful author. If you haven't heard, the last few episodes featured stories of his as well, and we're building up to a reveal when things conclude in a couple of weeks. This tale tonight is titled, The Bone Merchant. Avery. is a young investigative reporter, tenacious, a bit naive, and always looking out for a good story. One day, she sees an ad for a local plasma donation clinic offering big bucks for new donors. It gets her thinking that there might be a story here, something about literally taking blood from people desperate enough to sell it. So, she does what any intrepid reporter would, and signs up for the program. Thus begins Avery's descent into a strange world of blood, amputation, and something far stranger. And I'm sure you're sick of hearing about it by now, but Drew Blood, Paul J. McSorley, Jeff Sturdivant, and I also have a new show, Degenerated, a horror fiction podcast. We're not replacing Chilling Tales or anything, but if you want to supplement your horror consumption, it's worth checking out. Speaker 3 (3:09) And now, from author Micah Edwards, I give you, The Bone Merchant. Speaker 3 (3:19) Patients depend on plasma. Earn up to $1,000 your first month. Make an appointment now. Speaker 3 (3:27) From the beginning, Avery was only interested in the ad as a source for a potential story. She said as much to her roommate over breakfast when it interrupted her scrolling. Check it out, Val. She turned the phone around. Valentina flicked her eyes toward the screen and offered a disinterested grunt. People are literally selling their bodies. A thousand bucks a month for plasma. There's gotta be an expose here. Uh-huh. And that's why you're interested. Not because of the free money. I mean, if I were going undercover, I'd have to accept the money so as not to arouse suspicion. Right, very noble of you. You notice that it only mentions the first month, right? Classic scam. Hook them up front and reel them in slowly. Well, yeah, that's where the expose comes in. And the rent money you owe? Where does that come in? Avery grinned. From the thousand bucks the first month? And after, from my Pulitzer for my stunning piece on how America eats its lower class. Val shook her head. You ever think about just getting a job? I have a job. A job in your field, not a cashier's job. I like picking my own assignments. You like picking fights, is more like. Val wasn't wrong. Even back in college, working for the student paper, Avery had chafed at the insipid stories she was sent to pursue. Teacher voted best in English department. Campus cleanup judged a success. These were articles so obvious that she could have written them without ever talking to a single person involved. Her talent was wasted on this sort of fluff. Meanwhile, the campus was full of fraternity hazings and cover-ups, professorial misconduct, and all sorts of intrigue. The good news was that the school paper hadn't been allowed to throw her out. No matter how many spirited discussions she'd had with her editor, he'd been required to keep her on staff and give her at least occasional assignments. Not good ones, necessarily, but they were still good practice and helped to build her portfolio. Avery had been sure that things would be different once she got into the real world. In a sense, she was right. The first time she complained about a bland article she'd been tasked to write, the paper fired her. In retrospect, possibly phrases such as, a story so boring it could be billed as euthanasia, and appealing only to milquetoast morons, should not have made appearances in her argument. She tried to walk them back once it became clear that her new boss was significantly less interested in banter than the school editor had been, but it was far too late. Eager young reporters were a dime a dozen. The only thing setting Avery apart was her attitude, and that was no point in her favor. She tried again, landing a job at a small local paper, but she lasted less than a month before she told the editor that risks brought rewards, and that his readership would always remain small-minded and bucolic if they were spoon-fed nothing but pap from their supposed source of news. Avery didn't wait to get fired that time. She stormed out on the heels of her speech, sweeping the meager contents of her cubicle into a drawer, which he then yanked out of her desk and took with her. She had initially only intended on taking the drawer as far as her car, but after her dramatic exit, it seemed anticlimactic to come back in to drop something off. She kept it in her car for a few months, planning to leave it outside the office one day, but never quite got around to it. Eventually, Avery got tired of the guilt from looking at it and put it on the top shelf of her closet. She told herself that once she made it big as a reporter, she'd return the drawer with a copy of her groundbreaking article inside, and the paper would have a good laugh about the one they'd let get away. In the meantime, at least it was out of the way. The ad for Plasma really did seem like precisely the sort of story she was looking for. It portrayed itself as harmless, even noble. Who could be against helping patients, after all? But the big money lure spoke of something more sinister beneath. Something like, well, Avery couldn't imagine, actually. That was the hallmark of a good story, after all. Finding something totally unimaginable hidden behind something mundane. Everyone knew you could donate plasma for money, but who really knew what those clinics were like? The story unfolded itself like a roadmap in her head. She would go to the clinic, posing as a donor. She would meet the staff and maybe some other donors. As she went back for multiple sessions, she'd ingratiate herself with the nurses, make friends with the people who donated plasma on a regular basis, find out what they were like and whether this helped them. If the price stayed at $1,000 per month, which he highly doubted, that was $12,000 a year. A full-time minimum wage job only paid $15,000. It was possible that what she'd find was something truly good, allowing those with nothing else to sell something that their body produced naturally and make not enough to live on, but close. That was the best-case scenario, though, and even that wasn't that great. What she expected to find was a steep payment drop after the initial $1,000, probably 30 % or more. The regular donors would be sickly, giving away the nutrient-carrying part of their blood in exchange for booze, drugs, or lottery money. The clinic would have cement floors. Some of the lights would flicker intermittently. The smell of antiseptic would not quite cover up the rank stench of blood. Stop writing the story you think you'll find, Avery, said Val, interrupting her thoughts. I wasn't, Avery said guiltily. Val snorted. Please, I've known you long enough. Your lower lip twitches like you're trying out the sounds of the words in your mouth. If you want to go chase the story, then do it. But go in, unbiased, like a real reporter. I am a real reporter, Avery shot back, stung. Then get your story, Nellie Bly, and buy me something nice with a thousand bucks. I'm going to use that money to buy a plinth for my Pulitzer. Yeah? I figured you'd just display that in the drawer you stole from work. With no good retort, Avery turned her attention back to her phone and clicked on the ad. It brought her to a landing page for a company called Caduceus, with the tagline, Bringing People Together, which elicited a small laugh from Avery. she could appreciate a medical service with a sense of humor. After filling out a short form with basic information, Avery was given an address to report to and cautioned to allow two hours for the medical examination and initial donation. She also learned that to qualify for the $1,000, she'd need to download the Caduceus app to log her appointments. The first hurdle appears, Avery murmured. She dutifully followed the provided link. The phone app was minimalist but well-made. The company logo, a rusty yellow winged staff entwined by two snakes, was animated on the loading screen. The snakes spiraled around and around, never gaining any ground on each other. The animation disappeared after a few seconds and was replaced by a login screen. Within minutes, Avery had set up her account and could see her first appointment in the app. It had even interfaced with her calendar. Avery was impressed. She hadn't expected anything like the app. It was refreshing to see a medical provider that wasn't stuck in the stone and paper age. She was used to having to call doctors on the phone to get appointments. Being able to simply make one with the push of a button was a pleasant change. Already, Avery's mental image of bare concrete floors and paper-thin curtains separating donors into stalls was being replaced by something much more modern and high-tech. Perhaps Caduceus really would turn out to be a good experience. It was almost a shame, if so. It wouldn't be the society-shattering expose she'd hoped for. Still, it might well prove to be a piece of some interest. Nothing wrong with bringing attention to a company that was legitimately doing good work for both donors and patients, after all. So this situation was going to be a win for her no matter how it played out. The appointment was in two days. Avery tasked herself with doing all of the background research on Caduceus over the next 48 hours so that she'd have some idea of what to expect when she walked in. Val was right. Biases were no good. That was precisely why groundwork was so important. Avery considered herself an above-average researcher, especially when it came to ferreting information out online. She could conjure up the terms needed to make search engines exhume their longest buried pages. She followed board members and company connections with the tenacity of a bloodhound on the trail. It had served her well countless times before, helping her spot business connections and relevant history that others had missed. For Caduceus, though, she could barely find more than what was written on their About Us page. Their doctors were well-credentialed and the diplomas checked out, but she could find no evidence that any of them had ever worked at any other clinic. Caduceus had hired them all directly out of medical school. Similarly, no one on their board of directors seemed to be on any other board or in charge of any related company. There was nothing wrong with that, of course. It was even admirable. Avery just hadn't ever seen it before. In her reporting experience, people often held positions on more than one board at once. It wasn't a 40-hour-a-week position, so there was nothing stopping them from taking on multiple roles. There was generally paperwork to sign for non-disclosures and agreements not to use the information for personal gain. But also there was a lot of looking the other way because everyone knew that the point of those positions was personal enrichment, and not in the sense of growing as a person. Literal enrichment with money. The Caduceus board seemed to have no such potential conflicts of interest. Every board member worked solely for Caduceus. It was enough to make Avery wonder if they were fakes, but further research showed full histories for each one, with home addresses, phone numbers, vacation homes, and more. No social media, though. Not for the board, nor any of the doctors. Not one of the people associated with the company had so much as a defunct Twitter account that she could link back to their name. It was obvious that the company had some sort of policy against them. The chances of every single person they'd hired coincidentally being completely against social media was just too low. Avery made a note. It probably didn't mean anything, but it was weird, and weird threads sometimes led back to very interesting stories. Maybe there was someone secretive in charge, someone so reclusive that they were worried about even second-hand information about themselves getting out. Maybe it was something in the water at the office that turned everyone into a Luddite. Maybe all of Caduceus was a cult. Speaker 3 (15:31) No social media? was the first thing she'd found to write down about Caduceus. The rest of her page was distressingly blank. Avery pressed on with her search, but by the time her appointment arrived, she'd discovered little else to add to her notes. Caduceus existed professionally in all the ways a company should, putting out self-congratulatory press releases, donating money to events, collaborating with related companies. All of their employees' credentials and certifications checked out completely. But as far as the internet could see, outside of their work, none of them existed. There wasn't even any hint that they'd had social media accounts before taking jobs with Caduceus. Everything about them had been scrubbed. WP? Avery had written at one point, before crossing it out. The idea that an entire company was in witness protection was nonsensical. What would be the point of giving people new identities, only to then gather them all in one place? They'd only be protected until the first one was discovered. Still, the concept was alluring. It would certainly explain why no outside information was available. And although it was an unlikely explanation, it still seemed more logical than anything innocuous Avery could think up. Before leaving for the clinic, Avery texted her roommate with explicit details on where she was going, how long it was supposed to take, and how often she should expect to hear from her via text. You sure this is a good idea? Val texted back, seeming a little paranoid. Just being safe, Avery replied. Want you to have my back if anything's weird. How will I know it's you texting? Avery paused at that, considering. Even if she was allowed to, she didn't want to be making phone calls in the middle of a clinic. But she also didn't want to be missing for half a day while someone used her phone to text, everything is fine, to her lifeline. After a moment, she called Val. Real quick, she said when Val picked up. Let's set a password, then you'll know it's me. That only works if you don't get to send any replies at all, Val pointed out. Otherwise, they'll just see the password and know to use it. Okay, yeah, it's gotta shift. Um, how about this? I'll end the message with a word that rhymes with whatever hour it is, like the appointment's at two, so I might send... I'm good. How are you? Ridiculous, said Val. But it works. Make sure you're home while the hours are still easy to rhyme. Trust me, if I'm not back by seven, I probably actually am dead, and in heaven. You? Not likely. Oh, thanks. Love you, Rumi. Go investigate. Don't get all of your blood sucked out by vampires. Speaker 3 (18:35) After they hung up, Avery realized how much stress she'd been allowing to build up over this. Knowing that her roommate would be keeping a digital eye on her so she couldn't just vanish relieved the tension somewhat, but that called the rest of it into focus. Avery closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing slowly and deeply. She had conducted interviews with hostile subjects before. Even if everything went pear-shaped, this wouldn't be anything new. Except that this time they'll literally be bleeding me dry, she murmured. Breathe in, count to four. Breathe out, count to four. Negative thoughts aside. Relax. Prepare. Speaker 3 (19:19) The drive downtown was pleasant and uneventful. The clinic itself was exactly as it had appeared on the website. A standard cement office building, just one story high, well-maintained and tastefully set back from the road behind a row of small trees. The grass was trimmed and free of litter. The building bore no graffiti. Things were already better than in the worst-case scenarios Avery had imagined. She circled the building once, looking for oddities. It was clean and well-maintained all around, with the back of the building presenting the same attitude of quiet professional pride as the front. Avery was surprised to see no signs for other companies. It seemed that Caduceus owned the entire office. She supposed that that wasn't out of line for a successful medical firm, but it was a rarity in this part of town. Most companies just rented a room or two of office space, crowding three or four disparate businesses into the same building. Avery was glad that she'd be spared the embarrassment of wandering into the wrong office and telling a tax preparer that she was there to get blood drawn. Speaker 3 (20:30) The waiting room had tile floors and neutral tones on the walls. There were four people waiting when Avery walked in, three men and a woman. Judging by where they were sitting, none of them knew each other. All four had an air of middle class about them. There were no ostentatious watches or jewelry proclaiming excess wealth, but neither were the clothes worn out or out of fashion. Only the woman looked up as Avery entered. and she immediately returned to browsing her phone. Again, Avery moved her assessment of the business up a notch. This was not the vulnerable clientele she had thought she might see. Whatever Caduceus was doing, it was not simply preying on people with no alternatives. Just because that isn't all that they're doing doesn't mean that that's not one of the things they're doing, Avery reminded herself. She thought again about the employees and their personal absence from the internet. There was a story here, she just needed to follow the threads. The man at the front desk greeted her politely, nodded at the appointment notification on her app, and told her to take a seat until her name was called. She took a chair and opened her phone to text Val. I'm here, she wrote. She checked the time. It was 1.54, so the password had to rhyme with 1. It has begun! Val responded with an emoji of a blood drop. Avery closed the app. satisfied that her backup plan was in place. She eyeballed the other participants while pretending to look at her phone, committing them to memory. If she saw them back here again, she'd strike up a conversation, ask them about their experiences. She was working out a good format for the conversation, something that would be gently probing without making people worried that she was violating their medical privacy, when she heard her name called. Avery took a deep breath and stood up. Heading for the open doorway where a man in a lab coat stood waiting for her. She noted the lack of windows in the hallway past the waiting room, and hoped Val's comment about vampires wasn't too close to the mark. Thanks for coming out to donate today. The doctor offered Avery a winning smile and a brief handshake. I'm Dr. Galashvili. I'm here to give you the quick tour and convince you that there are real doctors working here. Avery laughed at his candor. I gather I'm not going to see a lot of you in future visits then? Dr. Galashvili shook his head. Pretty much everything on this end is done by the techs. I'll do the initial checks, hook you up, and do the whole plasmapheresis process. We like to show everyone a doctor at the beginning so that they know there's real medical science involved. We found it makes people more comfortable. And it doesn't pull the curtain away for you to explain all of that? As they walked down the hallway, Avery mentally compiled her thoughts about the building, making the same quick notes she would have made on paper. Clean floors, no open doors. Were all the rooms in use? Quiet. If Dr. Galashvili noticed her split attention, he gave no sign of it. Not really. I think there's a bad habit in the medical profession of treating people like children, both in assuming that the information they provide is no good and that the information they can receive needs to be sanitized. I think it does patients a disservice, and honestly, the doctors as well. I try to be as upfront with people as possible. I like to think that's why Caduceus puts me in charge of the meet and greets. I'm not just a pretty face. He was that, though. With his strong jaw, smooth skin, and white teeth, Dr. Galashvili was a doctor straight out of a television show. He appeared to be in good shape. His haircut was fresh, and there was no sign of stubble. His only flaw, if indeed it could be called that, was that his eyes were two different colors. The left eye was a light blue, almost aqua. The right one was a deep emerald green. It's called heterochromia, said Dr. Galashvili, who had definitely noticed the area of her attention this time. Sorry, I didn't mean to stare. He smiled, but Avery at ease. She was a little annoyed with herself at how well it worked. Not to worry, I'm used to the looks. You were fairly subtle compared to some. A number of people have asked me to take out my glass eye to show them. It is real, though, right? Dr. Glashvili laughed. If I were getting a glass eye, I'd get one to match. When you're working with biological ones, you get what you're given. We can't all be homochromatic. Avery raised an eyebrow. Is that really the term? I suppose monochromatic would be more standard if anything was used at all. No one feels the need to define a term for the default. So, as the rarity, I've decided that I can call the rest of you whatever I like. I use homochrome because it throws people off their game for a minute. Wow, you really don't mind pulling back the curtain on your own behavior, huh? I told you. I like to tell people things up front. It doesn't change the way they react to them, it just gives them more information about their own reaction. He opened a door into a small room, no more than eight feet on a side. The floor space was largely taken up by two incongruent objects, a large, comfortable chair with pillows strapped onto the arms, and an intimidating-looking machine. It was covered in an array of dials, topped by a monitor showing a number of incomprehensible statistics, and had several thick tubes running out of it. Avery pictured it harvesting her blood and suppressed a shiver. Menacing, isn't it? Dr. Galashvili asked. This is why we send everyone around with a doctor first. We're reassuring. I will now explain to you the safety and medical science behind the machine, and you will feel better about your upcoming plan to have your blood sucked out and pumped back in. Oh, go ahead. Tell me about the safety and medical science behind it. Well, it's very safe, and backed by superior medical science. Avery laughed. That's it? How much do you really want to know about centrifuges and the separation of whole blood? I can give you the entire speech if you'd like, but I've noticed people starting to eye that comfy chair when I get too deep into the details, so I've distilled it down to the essence. Oddly enough, he was right. The machine did seem less ominous than it had when Avery had first laid eyes on it. There was a lot to be said for a disarming smile and an insouciant nature. This is usually about the point where people ask me if I'm really a doctor or just a good-looking guy in a lab coat, Dr. Kalashvili said. Oh, you're on the website, Avery replied. And you checked my credentials? Dr. Kalashvili looked impressed. You might have said that you'd done your research before coming out here. I could have dredged up something better than the standard pattern to impress you. No research, I'd just like to know what to expect before I walk in. You're a rarity. If we had more people like you, I'd be out of a job. This part of the job, anyway. He paused. So, did you find out anything interesting about me online? Avery hesitated, wondering how much to reveal. Very little. You don't seem to be on social media at all. I'm not. It never really interested me, and it didn't seem to make the people using it particularly happy, so I just never made an account on any of the services. None of your colleagues seem to be on social media either. Avery Press. Aren't they? I suppose it's not that odd that we'd have similar mindsets. You didn't know they weren't on social media either? How would I know that? It doesn't come up in conversation much, and I obviously wouldn't have seen them posted anywhere. Avery laughed, conceding the point. Dr. Galashvili took her back down the hall to one of the doors they'd passed and opened it to reveal a more standard medical room, with the thin bed covered with a sheet of paper and various medical supplies stacked on most other available surfaces. From here, I'll leave you to the tender mercies of the technicians. I'll take some of your blood and not give it back, then lead you back to the blood box, which will take a lot more of your blood, but put all of the relevant parts back where they came from. Do you practice explaining your job badly, or does it come naturally? I see when people's eyes glaze over, and that tells me what parts to stop over-explaining. What you're hearing now is the distillation of years of explanations that no one cared about, reduced down to the bits everyone retained. Then I appreciate the sacrifice of those who