The Borrowed World (Book 3): Legion of Despair

by Franklin Horton

  “None of that matters anymore,” Boyd said. “Your son and husband are part of your old life. You’re going to have a new life. With me.”

  Alice cracked her eyes and stared at him. “I have a life. I have people that care about me. People that I care about.”

  Boyd smiled at her, then shook his head, a look of pity in his eyes. “Not right now, you don’t, Alice. Now you have nothing. But you do have an option. You can have the life I give you or you can have nothing at all.”

  “What do you mean by nothing?” she croaked.

  “Nothing,” he repeated. “As in no life. As in I kill you in this basement and you never see another day on this miserable Earth.”

  She clamped her eyes shut and lay there. She would not give him any tears.

  “You think about it,” he said, rising from the floor.

  “Take these zip ties off,” she begged. “They’re cutting off my circulation.”

  He stomped loudly up the wooden steps. “Consider it an incentive to think very carefully.”

  “I’m hungry!” she cried.

  “More incentive!” he called back to her.

  *

  Alice lost consciousness after he left. She was too miserable to sleep, but the weakness from her deprivations pulled her into blackness. It was like the fevered sleep of the flu, where you lost all orientation to time and place.

  When she awoke, she opened her eyes and saw nothing. She moved her head, looked in all directions. More blackness. She listened and heard nothing. For a few moments she thought she had passed away and was dead once and for all, then gradually the throb of her raw wrists and ankles crept upon her and she knew that she was still alive.

  She felt the need to urinate, which was surprising to her since she had not had anything to drink all day. She started to just let go and pee on herself, then she decided this might be an opportunity to appeal to Boyd’s sympathy and see if she could gain any ground with him. Showing that she needed him would give him the feeling of control over her and he seemed to want that.

  She cleared her throat and called his name. “Boyd.”

  What came out was little more than a hoarse whisper. She worked her mouth, trying to distribute what little moisture remained there.

  “Boyd,” she called. It was slightly louder this time but she still suspected it could not be heard beyond the basement.

  “BOYD!” she yelled, louder this time, stronger.

  “WHAT?” he bellowed.

  She jerked in terror and nearly lost control of her bladder.

  “WHAT?” he repeated, screaming in her face.

  Where had he come from?

  A powerful flashlight came on just inches from her face. She contorted, tried to crush her eyes closed, the pain from the beam making her head explode. He must have been sitting there in front of her this whole time, in the dark, just…staring.

  “Turn it off!” she pleaded. “Please turn it off.”

  “You yelled for me,” he said, his voice reverberating off the stone walls of the old basement.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said, twisting her body, trying to get her face out of the beam of the powerful light.

  “You don’t know what hurt is,” he said. “Yet.”

  He turned the light off and the pain in her head disappeared as quickly as it had come. She was breathing erratically, her heart pounding. “Thank you,” she gasped. “Thank you.”

  He said nothing for a moment and she lost track of him in the darkness. She felt him, though. Knew that he was there now, knew that he was within reach.

  “What do you want?” he asked. His voice was different now. It was a voice she’d never heard from him before. Before he’d almost been playful, though still clearly crazy. He’d displayed a sense of humor.

  This person here in the darkness with her now sounded demonic. She felt that he was right on the razor’s edge between continuing this game with her and slaughtering her as he had Rebecca. This was the man she’d seen choking Rebecca in the luggage compartment of that bus, and no doubt the man that killed her as well. It was the shadowy, evil man that lived inside the other. She had to pull the other back somehow. She had to make the monster retreat back into the cave and leave the other man, the man that she might have just the slightest chance of outwitting.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” she whispered. She tried to make her voice as non-threatening as possible, adding a note of embarrassment, of desperation. She wanted to make sure he knew he was in the position of power in this interaction. It was the only way he would possibly go for it.

  “Then go,” he said. She could tell from his voice that there was some of the old Boyd in there. This was the voice of the sarcastic smartass, not the killer. Still, there was an underlying rage and hostility that scared her.

  “I don’t want to go on myself,” she said. “I smell bad enough and I don’t have any other clothes. Can’t I just use the toilet?”

  “They don’t work anymore,” he said. “There’s no running water.”

  “Then where are you going?”

  “The yard,” he said, as if it were the dumbest question he’d been asked all day.

  “Can’t I use the yard too?”

  He was silent. She could hear him breathing. She could feel him thinking, the rusty, encumbered wheels grinding.

  His flashlight clicked on and she shut her eyes tightly. She heard Boyd stand and move about the room. Items were moved, a plastic bag rustled. Suddenly hands grabbed her and rolled her over onto her face. She heard the rattling of a chain, then felt something around her neck. She heard the plastic ratcheting sound of another zip tie and felt one bite into her neck. She gasped in panic, thinking he was going to tighten one around her neck and kill her. Though he stopped short of that, she could not push the thought of dying that way from her head.

  She heard a metallic click, then a pulling at her wrists as that zip tie was cut. Soon, her feet were free too. She sagged onto the floor, limbs outstretched, feeling the blood restored to her aching extremities.

  “I thought you had to pee,” he said. “Get up.”

  She stood awkwardly, staggering. She was dizzy and her feet were still numb. She felt a tugging at her neck. It wasn’t hard, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks. Then Boyd tugged harder and he was at her back, whispering over her shoulder, his mouth inches from her ear.

  “I have you on a leash,” he said. “I ran the zip tie through a link of this chain so you cannot get loose. Don’t even try. You can do what you need to do in the backyard, but I’m not letting go of this leash. If you try anything at all, I will tighten it and watch you die.”

  She thought this over for a moment. “I’m not sure I can pee with you standing right there,” she said.

  “This is the last time I’m asking,” he said. “Do you want to go or not?”

  “I’ll go,” she said quickly, not wanting to take a chance on him changing his mind.

  He used his light to get them to the stairs and then turned it off. Boyd went ahead of her, walking with a sure step up the dark stairs. Halfway up, her leash tightened and he yanked. She had no choice but to start feeling her way up the stairs using her hands. On all fours, trying to negotiate the unfamiliar stairs, she indeed felt like a dog on a leash. She resolved that she would make him pay for this if she ever had the opportunity.

  At the top of the steps, Boyd swung open the creaky old door, stepping into the house. When she joined him, she could see nothing. She involuntarily put her hands on Boyd’s arm, using him as a guide through the unfamiliar terrain of the house. In a moment, he pushed against the metal latch of a storm door and they stepped onto a porch.

  “Where?” Alice asked.

  “Not on the damn porch!” Boyd said. “Down the steps. Into the yard.”

  Not wanting to raise further ire, Alice felt around until she found a porch rail, then felt further until she found a rail descending. She followed it to the end of the leash, unbuttoned her p
ants, and peed in the grass. She felt her neck, noting that Boyd had threaded the zip tie right through a link in the chain, just as he’d said. There was nothing she could feel that would allow her to escape the leash without a knife.

  She must have lingered too long because a sudden yank on the leash nearly pulled her over.

  “I ain’t got all night,” he said.

  When they re-entered the house, Alice’s heart filled with dread at climbing back down into the dark basement. She feared that she’d never make it out of there again.

  “Do you want to talk some more, Boyd?”

  He laughed. “I’m not ready to talk to you now. I will be later.”

  He led her back down the steps, using the light and keeping her on a tight leash.

  “Can you not tie me so tightly this time?” she asked. “Please?”

  In the end, he left the leash on her neck, tying the other end to one of the support posts. He also put a fresh zip tie on her hands, but left her feet free this time.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said.

  “Can I have some water?” she asked. “I’m thirsty. Hungry too.”

  “Maybe I’ll feed you tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe I won’t.”

  Chapter 3

  The Valley

  Russell County, VA

  In a valley alongside the Clinch Mountain range there lived a man named Buddy Baisden. Buddy had a larger ranch-style brick house that he’d built in the 1980s. The light in Buddy Baisden’s life went out two days before everyone else in Russell County lost theirs. That was the day his daughter Rachel died of an OxyContin overdose.

  Buddy had already lost his wife three years earlier to some kind of female cancer that he didn’t know much about. All he knew was that it took from him the woman who made his house into a home for him and Rachel. His daughter had been a senior in high school and he began losing her the day his wife died. She spent less and less time at home, giving him vague answers about where she was and what she was doing. He gave her curfews that she ended up breaking. His punishments had a limited effect and only served to push them further apart. He gave up punishing her eventually, hoping he might preserve his relationship with the only other person in this world that he gave two damns about.

  Rachel had still looked healthy, but she came home often without that glow in her eye that he lived to see. She staggered around the house and bumped into things. Several times she had lain in the bed and urinated upon herself, so high on pills that she could not even get up to use the bathroom. He had tried talking to her, which only made her mad. After those talks she would stay away from home for days to punish him, so he quit saying anything.

  She’d been with her latest boyfriend for several months. He was of a cut that Buddy didn’t care for. He drove a banged up late-model Camaro in an unattractive teal color. He was forty but seemed to think he was twenty, running around with girls Rachel’s age and partying when he should have been working. Buddy wondered if he was a drug dealer, but he didn’t know enough about such things to know what the signs were.

  Then one night, Rachel died outside of the Emergency Room doors at the local hospital, where she’d been dumped like garbage. She was not immediately noticed, laying there in the dark, but a nurse on a smoke break eventually found her. They tried everything they could, including administering opiate blockers, and were unable to bring her back from the dead. The police never figured out where she’d been or who she’d been with. No one was talking.

  Buddy wasn’t talking. He knew who she left home with and he knew where to find him. There was some justice better administered by a father than by the court system. It was a matter of love and of honor.

  Her funeral was on the very day that the lights went out. With the condition of the country and the concern about more terror attacks, no one but Buddy showed up. They buried her on a sunny day in the cemetery in town. Buddy gave her his plot, right beside his wife. He figured he’d just have to buy another for himself. He’d never counted on needing more than two.

  On the way home from the funeral, Buddy stopped at the local Chevron to fill up his truck. When he pulled in, he found the pumps roped off with yellow crime scene tape. A deputy was sitting in his car, watching Buddy. A sign on the bank of pumps said: Pumps Closed.

  Buddy got out of his truck and approached the deputy. “I hear the generator running,” he said. “Why ain’t they selling gas?”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?” the deputy asked, squinting up at him.

  Buddy hadn’t had his television on since the police came and told him about Rachel. “No, don’t reckon I have.”

  The deputy frowned at this, unable to imagine anyone who could not know what was going on in the world right now. “Terrorists are blowing shit up all over the country. They say it’s ISIS or Al Qaeda. They blew up the big refineries and it’s going to take a while to get them back online. The president has stopped all fuel sales except for police, military, and other first responders. It’s for emergencies only.”

  Buddy nodded. He didn’t have the words left in him that day to argue or ask questions. He was too numb. He walked back to his truck, started it and drove off toward home.

  *

  Buddy’s family was not originally from Russell County, but from nearby Wise County. His father had been a coal miner for most of his life. In 1958, Buddy’s father saw his own brother crushed when a slab of un-cribbed slate dropped from the mine roof. The two men had been discussing going deer hunting the next day. As they walked in the stooped posture required by low coal toward the shuttle car that would take them out of the mine, there was a thud that shook the ground and a puff of displaced air that pushed gently against Buddy’s father’s back. He turned and found that his brother was no longer behind him. Only a hand and forearm extended from beneath the car-sized chunk of slate. He dropped and took the hand in his, but despite its warmth there was no life left in the limp flesh. Buddy’s father left the mine that day and never went underground again.

  Shortly after that, Buddy’s father bought an abandoned house on an empty stretch of dirt road far from town. He spent several months gutting and remodeling the house until he had fashioned it into some semblance of what was locally known as a “beer joint.” When the interior of the building was done and all that remained was repainting the old house, a mining friend stole ten gallons of yellow safety paint from his job. Buddy’s father painted the house and all the exterior trim with that color. The paint had the added benefit of high reflectivity, a feature that enhanced the safety aspects of the product, and the result was that headlights would illuminate the building brightly when they landed on the lone structure in the remote countryside. Buddy’s father aptly named his new establishment The Yellow House.

  Over the next several years, Buddy’s mother and father ran The Yellow House with modest success. They developed a reputation for good quality meals at a fair price. Cold beer could also be had at a reasonable price. While hard liquor required a license that Buddy’s father did not have, he kept such spirits under the counter and would sell them by the shot to men that he knew. For those that appreciated the novelty of untaxed clear liquor, the highest quality local moonshine was also available by the shot or by the jar.

  Despite taking liberty with the letter of the law, Buddy’s father did not flaunt his under-the-counter offerings. He even developed a regular clientele of deputies and state troopers who stopped in for a free meal and a coffee mug of their preferred beverage, which was as apt to be moonshine as coffee.

  The Yellow House thrived until a fall day in 1963. Buddy’s mother opened up for the lunch shift while Buddy’s father ran into town to make a bank deposit. His wife had opened the lunch shift on her own many times over the past couple of years and had never had any problems. The lunchtime opening of a drinking establishment, though, can represent Happy Hour for a man who has been working the night shift and has not yet made it home to bed.

  Buddy’s mother, as she did near
ly every day, served beers to such men, who would drink them with their meal and go home to sleep until their next shift. On this day, she only had a few customers and most ate their lunches and then left promptly. One man did not. He continued to drink and made comments to Buddy’s mother of an insulting and inappropriate nature. She cut him off, having served him a half-dozen beers already. This made him angry and he refused to pay, issuing vile promises to Buddy’s mother before left. These were emphasized with a firm hand encircling her wrist, a gesture that made her all too aware of the man’s strength and, at the same time, of her own vulnerability.

  She had stopped her crying and shaking by the time Buddy’s father returned. She could not hide that she was upset and wilted under the pressure of her husband’s stern gaze. She told him the entire story. Buddy’s father knew the man she spoke of, and in fact had passed him walking home a few miles down the road. Buddy’s father walked out of The Yellow House and sped off, gravel spraying from beneath the tires of his black Buick Electra.

  It took him no time to find the walking man, who’d turned off the main road by this time and was following a narrow dirt road along the Levisa River. Buddy’s father slid to a stop and got out of the car. The man must surely have sensed who Buddy’s father was and why he was there, but he reportedly said nothing. Buddy’s father withdrew a .25 caliber Colt automatic from his pocket. He shot the drunk man in the face until he fell and kept shooting him until the gun was empty. When he left the scene, Buddy’s father made a tight turn, backing over the body twice before his car was pointed in the right direction.

  Buddy often wondered why his dad did not attempt to hide the body, but he made no such effort. The body was found and reported before the day was out. While the face of the dead man was not easily recognizable, the reek of alcohol was, and that led the police right to the door of the most likely place that the alcohol had been obtained -- The Yellow House.