by Alan Spencer
“Morty’s awake,” Hanna said. “We should see how he’s doing.”
“It might make you feel better to talk to your father, Cheyenne,” Bruce said, getting up to lead the way. “I know you’re hurting right now, sweetie. You have to be tough. I know you can pull through this. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to see you through this difficult time.”
Morty was shrieking, “I’m not crazy! I wouldn’t hurt anybody, not ever!”
Bruce stormed up the stairs ahead of Cheyenne and Hannah. “Jesus, what’s wrong with him? What’s he going on about?”
Cheyenne was right behind him.
“I don’t know. It’s like he’s being attacked. He sounded like that the night he was doing that in his sleep.”
Hannah was the last up the stairs.
Bruce reached the doorway, then Cheyenne, then Hannah. When they stepped into the bedroom, Morty was missing.
Bruce: “What’s burning?”
Cheyenne: “And that smell?”
Hannah wrinkled her face. “It smells like fire.”
Before any of them could question any further, they were covering their faces, shouting in horror, calling out for help, when the violent red light burst from the bedroom doorway.
They were consumed instantly.
Janet was hot on the heels of the noises. Strange red lights kept flashing from upstairs. She could see the flashes from the bottom of the stairway now. 9mm drawn, Janet charged up the stairs. The screams, the peals of horror. What had happened to the man and the woman who entered the house earlier? Janet was hesitant to thrust herself in the middle of it, yet the curiosity was so strong, she abandoned all sense of safety in exchange for the answers.
Was Morty a killer?
Was there something else going on in this house?
The red lights were like lashings against her skin. Janet was screaming with each step she climbed higher. She couldn’t open her eyes. Through her eyelids, red blazed into her retinas. Janet moved blindly. She couldn’t turn back even if she wanted to. A force was compelling her up each stair. Her joints bent and flexed against her brain’s command to turn around, to run the hell out of there, to fuck the story, to go home where it was safe. The 9mm fired twice at empty air. Helpless, Janet was forced into Morty’s room.
She too crossed through the burning doorway.
Chapter Twenty
Detective Larson stood among the many officers waiting in the street outside of Morty Saggs’s residence. When the detective was called out onto the scene, Larson already knew they had a hostage situation on their hands. Morty had finally come to terms with the fact he had lost his mind and killed his wife. And now, they were at a stand-off. This could go all night. People might die, Cheyenne Saggs included. Two others were also inside, including Bruce Spaniel and Hannah Albertson.
Larson watched the other officers at work, including a sharpshooter who positioned himself behind the line of police vehicles facing Morty’s house. Another crew was circling the perimeter of the house, taking point. They would do anything to disarm the hostage taker. It was confirmed two gunshots were heard fired in the house. Another fact: Janet Ranscombe’s vehicle was located on the block. Better yet, the reporter was missing. Most likely, she was inside the house as well. That would mean another head to account for. Another hostage in Morty’s crosshairs.
Things were heading in a sour direction and fast. Morty had the control and power, and give a psychotic both those things, it created a solid equation for a high body count. Larson would have to call in a negotiator, learn Morty’s demands, and then everybody would have to team up to lure Morty out of the house without bullets being fired.
This was going to be one long night.
None of the steps Larson had considered would be necessary. Morty called down to them from the upstairs window. The blinds were drawn, so nobody could see him. Morty said he was surrendering, but only on one condition. Detective Larson had to come upstairs alone. He only wanted a minute of the detective’s time, and then they could arrest him. The hostages would be released. Morty was in fact the one responsible for Glenda’s disappearance. He would give the detective a full detailed confession, but first, Morty needed to talk to Larson upstairs, and most importantly, alone.
His fellow officers warned Larson of the potential danger of this proposition, but Larson had been through this scenario before. The detective knew this could be a psycho’s ruse to kill him, another play in the man’s sick-ass game. Morty played him good in the interrogation room the other day. When Morty mentally collapsed, freaked out and raised hell in that room, the man slipped right out of his hands. Larson gave Morty that point. But this time Morty wasn’t getting away with anything else.
Larson strapped on a bulletproof vest just in case Morty opened fire on him. Once Larson was ready to approach the house, he used the bullhorn to announce that he was coming into the house and not to shoot. Morty called back down that he heard the detective loud and clear and to come on up.
The detective approached the house, entering slowly through the front door. He exercised universal precautions by sweeping the living room with his .28 police issue revolver. The strangest odor hit him immediately of something burning. It didn’t smell like firewood or food burning on a grill. It was noxious, offensive and most of all, unnatural.
What the hell was going on in this house?
The detective expected to turn a corner, venture into another room and step into a mass sacrifice. Larson imagined body parts on the ground and pieces hanging from the ceiling fan. Maybe be more creative, add Satanic symbols drawn in blood on the walls, or some other fucked up dark demonic rites. But there wasn’t a single drop of blood anywhere.
Only that damnable burning smell.
Morty’s voice called down to him, saying to go up the stairs and meet him in the bedroom. It would only take a minute. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was going to die. Nothing bad was going to happen to anybody if Larson just came upstairs for a second to clear up a few things before being arrested.
Larson didn’t trust anybody, especially a hostage taker, a psycho like Morty Saggs. The detective kept the gun trained in front of him, promises be damned.
Up the stairs he crept. Every creak announced his position. Outside the room Morty was hiding in, Larson said, “I’m coming in the room. Please don’t shoot me.”
Morty indicated everything was safe. He could come inside. No harm was coming his way.
When he entered, Larson stepped into an empty room.
Where the hell did Morty go?
Where did Cheyenne, Hannah, Bruce and Janet go?
Morty couldn’t stash that many people by himself. Did the son of a bitch have an accomplice?
The burning smell doubled. He gagged on it, his eyes leaking tears, because the stench was as strong as cut onions and high proof rotgut alcohol. All at once, a red light was shooting out of the room’s doorway, blinding him.
He heard Morty shouting for him to run and get away before it was too late.
Janet Ranscombe was pleading for her life.
Hannah lost herself in a fit of uncontrollable emotions.
The sheer impossibility of the doorway being on fire hit the detective. Deny it all he wanted, there it fucking was. The bastard was telling the truth.
“JESUS NO!!!”
Larson was consumed by the raging red colors and forced through to the other side of the doorway.
Chapter Twenty-One
Things had taken a terrible turn. That’s why Officer Chris Wright was called out onto the scene along with a dozen other officers. After hearing Detective Larson pleading for his life from Morty Saggs’s residence, Wright knew action had to be taken. Entering the house with the terrible smells of burning hitting each of the officers, like charcoal briquettes doused in something chemical, Wright heard Detective Larson unleash a terrib
le call of agony from upstairs. Larson shouted for backup, that there were innocent people in danger in the upstairs bedroom. Send every cop in the house through the doorway, and do it NOW.
Officer Wright headed the charge upstairs. Officers were behind him, ready to back him up. He expected to see Larson shot up and on the ground covered in blood, and anticipated dodging bullets, but neither of those things occurred. Wright stepped foot into a bedroom. The moment he crossed the threshold, the doorway appeared to be on fire, burning with the intensity of the sun. The colors instantly ruined his vision. Wright was consumed by the raging colors of red and the burning. He wasn’t sure where he was anymore. It was as if the room, and himself, were being consumed by the colors. Other officers were shrieking in reaction, unable to contain their horror at the impossible situation.
It wasn’t much longer before the doorway vanished.
Morty Saggs’s bedroom was empty.
Officer Wright and his backup were gone.
Captain Murtaugh toured the house of Morty Saggs for the fourth time and things still didn’t add up. Where did his officers and Detective Larson go? The one remaining officer on the scene who hadn’t seemingly vanished into thin air all said to Murtaugh: I have no fucking clue what the hell happened. How did all of those cops and a detective disappear? How did Morty Saggs, his daughter, two family friends and an amateur reporter disappear as well?
No.
Fucking.
Clue.
Captain Murtaugh tried Detective Larson’s cell phone. He didn’t get an answer, and he couldn’t leave a message. It just kept ringing.
The captain didn’t like this at all.
Maybe there was a hidden compartment in the house they didn’t know about, where the twelve cops were stashed, along with the detective.
That made bullshit sense. With twelve cops, there would’ve been a firefight. Bullet holes in the walls, and more probable, a dead hostage taker. Worst case, dead police. Throughout the rest of the house, there wasn’t a speck of blood or a shred of evidence indicating where anybody could’ve gone.
That was almost twenty people the house had taken in mysteriously. There were calls to make. Interviews with the neighbors to conduct. Rational explanations to find.
Murtaugh wished he was like his best friend who had retired a year ago, Chief Darrel Perry. The bastard could smoke his cigars, enjoy his bourbon nightcaps and not have to worry about messed-up investigations that were like puzzles without the pieces.
The captain was in for a long fucking night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
What happened was only something you could describe after the fact. If you survived it, then you registered the details. Then you reacted. That was Morty’s present situation. He ended up on his hands and knees trying to catch his breath. Pearls of sticky sweat covered his face and neck. Every part of him was high on adrenaline. His heart was beating like a heavy metal double bass drum. He feared he was going to have a deadly heart attack. Still trying to catch his breath, he swept the area with his eyes. The intense red light was gone. Cheyenne was on the ground nearby, also out of breath, her eyes wide as if she was staring insanity in the face. Bruce was curled up on his side as if he’d broken his ribs. Morty couldn’t move yet. Everything was an effort just to breathe and slow down his chugging heart.
Entering the violent red light, it was like jumping into fire. Morty felt flames eat into his skin. He smelled his own flesh burn. Felt the agony of his muscle tissue bubbling and boiling from the heat. But he wasn’t burned. His skin was intact. Other than shock, Morty was untouched.
Blinking the red spots out of his eyes, Morty’s vision adjusted. His eyes went from squinting to gaping wide. Shattered and broken dark brown brick was scattered around him. The floor was solid concrete. They were in the basement of Morty’s house. Strange, though, because nothing that belonged to Morty was here anymore. Something was very wrong here. The lights coming from the ceiling didn’t exude yellow. The lights shed a burning coal red. Everything appeared to be bathed in blood; a trick of the lights. Morty was already rubbing at his eyes. They ached against the harsh color.
The rest of the details in the room would come to him later.
Right now, all that mattered was his precious daughter.
Morty rushed over to Cheyenne who was sprawled on the floor clutching her arm as if she’d landed hard on it.
“You okay, honey?” He panicked when she didn’t respond. “Tell me you’re okay.”
Cheyenne could only nod. She couldn’t speak. Her breath was uneven. She was panting. Morty held her close and did his best to soothe his poor daughter. Morty checked her over. She wasn’t bleeding or damaged besides her arm.
“Is anybody hurt?” Morty asked everybody in the room. “Speak up.”
Hearing Morty’s voice rocked Bruce out of whatever mental hell he was trapped in.
“I landed funny, man. I might’ve broke my ribs. It’s like somebody picked us up and dropped us down several flights of stairs.”
Morty didn’t hear half of what his best friend said. His focus was stolen by the table that took up a quarter of the open area in the basement. The table was of thick stock. Mighty oak varnished with a cherry veneer. A giant light bulb housed in a wire cage hung right above the table casting down that unnerving color of red.
Stranger still, surrounding the table were more of those broken bricks. Morty thought about it for a time and realized the table used to be surrounded by four walls of bricks. The walls were broken, but by what, and why? So much didn’t make sense in the room.
It wasn’t just the table that gripped Morty in horror. Hannah was sitting in a chair with her head, chest and arms slumped over the tabletop. Her right hand was flat on the table. Five nails had been driven into her hand. The nails were at least five to six inches long. Around the entry points, ragged flesh showed between exposed bone. Hannah had tried to work her hand free from its forced down position with no success except to further her own agony. The circle of blood on the tabletop continued to widen. There was also a larger pool at Hannah’s feet that had curdled. The blood looked plastic in the light.
The facts weren’t adding up in Morty’s mind. Hannah staked down to a table. Hannah pale as death. Her eyes remained open in terror. Those eyes seemed to be looking right at Morty for answers. Why did this happen to me?
Hannah wasn’t recently dead. She had been dead for several hours even though they had just passed through the burning doorway minutes ago.
“Oh my God, Hannah!” Cheyenne was at her father’s side. “Who would do such a thing to her?”
Morty heard Bruce grumble “Sick” under his breath.
The three of them stood in the room trying to figure out how they winded up in Morty’s basement and why Hannah was dead on the table.
Morty thought out loud because he couldn’t stand the silence.
The silence scared the shit out of him.
“This table’s not mine. I mean, it wasn’t in my basement. I’ve never owned it. And these broken bricks are strange. It’s like someone walled up the table then shattered the bricks. Why would, I mean—?”
“So how’s any of that supposed to explain Hannah’s death?” Bruce motioned around the room with his hands. “This is your basement. This is happening in your house. Your wife is missing. This all has to do with you, Morty. You. You. You. So do you have something you need to tell us?”
The sight of blood and a corpse had turned Bruce into a crazed bully. The man was poised to take a swing at Morty at the best opportunity. Cheyenne squeezed her father’s arm harder, either showing support for him or fear of Bruce.
Morty chose his words carefully. He knew this situation could escalate no matter what he said in the coming moments.
“I can’t explain any of this. Look, if I could, I would. I promise you guys I would. How could anyone explain
this? I didn’t see Hannah murdered. I don’t know who did this. I know only as much as you guys do. If we’re going to figure things out, we’re going to have to work together. We can’t turn on each other. I promise I have nothing to do with this. Let me make that clear. What human being can make a doorway burn? What human being can make a doorway suck people in? Think logically. We’re all angry, confused and in shock. But if we come undone, how are we going to survive this? I am not the one you should be worried about right now. It’s whoever killed poor Hannah we should be watching for.”
Bruce’s eyes were a snake’s. They called bullshit against Morty. He didn’t say it, but the man was thinking it.
Morty didn’t know if everybody in this room considered him a suspect for a crime yet to be identified. There was one thing he did know.
“What happened to us happened to Glenda. My wife is here somewhere, and I am going to find her.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The horrible red lights, the burning heat against her flesh, the feeling of being pulled forward by an invisible force, the assault didn’t end until Janet was on all fours against a cold tile floor. “Ahhhhhhhh-gawwwwwwwwd!” Janet repeated the wailing scream until her throat gave out. Unable to see where she was, Janet crab-walked backwards and soon hit a wall. She screamed out on impact, got to her feet, ran forward and hit another wall. She banged her forehead. Janet stumbled in confusion, then stayed still. She stared at her reflection in a mirror. The surface was caked in rust, dirt and smears resembling blood spatter. The entire room was the definition of grime. She smelled the mixture of stale unkempt bodies, and even worse, death. The room resembled the inside of a brown bottle that had grown moldy on the inside. It was stifling hot. Janet had trouble breathing.
The room wasn’t lit very well. Weak amber light filtered into the room from the crack at the bottom of the doorway. Janet turned the knob. It crunched, being locked.
