Eyes that do not Open

by Claudio Hernández

  “They are in the other room. First I must dress you up. It’s in poor taste to show up sloppy and unattended.” The sicko pointed to a wooden chair that was chipped and wobbly. It was in the middle of the room, next to a table that had makeup and dye for hair. “Please sit down.”

  Hannah reluctantly did as she was told. She trusted in this twisted minded freak. After all this time, she started to trust him, which was contradictory. It’s like falling in love with your husband’s murderer. Sometimes, however, this happens. There was no reason not to trust. They were in this situation where all they knew was a part of this sicko’s mind. The other side of the coin was surfacing like when the moon shows its face and neither Hannah nor the others felt a bad presence. Maybe because she longed for freedom and they thought the time had come. She, however, heard him say that they were in another room. What was that supposed to mean? Was it a joke? Far from making a fuss and confronting that sicko who started moving sensually, she decided to sit on the chair as if she were about to watch a movie.

  Her heart started to beat fast.

  “Why this obsession with makeup?” Hannah was waiting for some sort of a relevant answer that made sense to her.

  “Because beauty is everything in this life. Only the most beautiful will be eternal, even when you are put into your coffin, being buried, even then you must look beautiful before death.”

  Was that a paradox?

  Hannah’s heart was pumping like a fireman’s hose, pushing the blood through her veins. Her face turned pale white and her eyes were sinking into her sockets. She was thinking of attacking the sicko, but she knew there was no escaping that dungeon. They knew that after so many years of being there.

  They knew it.

  “Is death your new raison d'être?” It was such a peculiar question. Hannah’s face was covered in sweat. It was a dense and hot room making it difficult to breathe the air.

  “I love beauty as a form of life.” The answer came to her.

  Now, Hannah’s heart was like a ticking bomb, like a watch that’s about to burst. Her hands started to tremble. The sicko walked towards the sink in the back of the room turning on the faucet with a squeaky sound. The water came out bubbling till the sink was almost overflowing and he then filled a bowl.

  “What are you going to do to me?” A disoriented and lost Hannah asked. It was no longer the talkative Hannah. Now her phrases were short and filled with only questions. The feeling in the room was like a giant tombstone. You could barely breathe in there.

  “Wash your hair,” said the sicko while he was drawing closer to her with an overflowed bowl of water that splashed on to the floor. His bare feet slipped on the water like a boat.

  “You do that every two days,” Hannah complained while her heart was at the tip of her tongue. She wished to die right then, even though all he was doing was washing her hair. Something inside of her knew he wouldn’t only do that. The heat in the room was heavy on her chest and she almost choked.

  “But today’s hair washing is something special. I am going to dye your hair.” The sicko’s eyes lit up like two lighting bugs on a summer night.

  “Don’t you like my hair color already?” Hannah looked into his eyes. The bowl splashed water on a tray that had all kinds of makeup items.

  “Yes, I like it but today is a very special day and you’ll have to dye it to another color that I’m sure you’ll like.”

  Hannah’s forehead wrinkled up like a beat up bed sheet.

  “Will you dye it brown?”

  “No.”

  “What color?”

  “Blue.”

  “What?” She blurted while she raised her head like a nail nailed to that chair. Her eyes should have moved at least a millimeter from the normal position. It’s as if they were pushed in by two springs.”

  The sicko carefully grabbed a plastic container containing some mushy substance. Picked it up and said:

  “Blue is the color of beauty and eternal life. You should look very beautiful in order to show you off.” The sicko then kept himself quiet, leaving the phrase as an enigma.

  Hannah was sure that this person was worse than before. A twisted mind that had awoken and was showing mental disorders and a dissociative personality, and why not, an unmeasured madness.

  “You are insane!” Hannah yelled with foam coming out of her mouth. “What the fuck does this all mean? Is this a ritual? Is this a satanic ritual? Are you out of your mind?” Hannah placed her finger on her forehead with enough force to hurt herself. Her pain, however, was nothing compared to her frustration and fear. She began to feel that same fear that caressed her skin like the day she was abducted. The same fear she felt for the first three months that never left her; it was just dormant.

  The sicko, acting as if nothing was going on, opened the bottle and poured that white pasty stuff that looked like some toothpaste at the other edge of the bowl. He then poured a different liquid, it was peroxide and he began to stir them with a brush.

  Hannah couldn’t keep her eyes off him, but she didn’t say anything. The sicko finally spoke.

  “I have to make sure you look beautiful and prepared for what’s coming.” He caressed Hannah’s hair with the brush that smelled like dead dogs. The smell was nauseating with an acidy scent as well.

  And he started to prepare her.

  70

  Andrew was craving a cigarette to smoke but had a beer instead. It was cold and dripped from the sides of the bottle. He took it out of the fridge that froze things like a son of a bitch. There were many nights he couldn’t sleep because of the sounds coming from the fridge were unbearable. It was as if one hundred giant flies were hovering around his head.

  He was still wearing his trench coat and his watch struck nine thirty. He was dragging his loafers across the linoleum floor towards the kitchen and to his office. He stopped at the window and opened the blinds with his tiny left hand. He saw a golden glowing reflection coming from Clarice’s caravan’s dull windows.

  Everything was fine.

  Except for those three poor women and their destiny, because during that day he had seen his third victim with her eyes closed, but never saw the murderer. He longed to see what the murderer looked like, he desired it as much as he desired taking a swig of a cold beer.

  The smell of the hotdogs was lingering in the air and the wind picked up as if it was the Wolf blowing the three little pigs’ house down. The night wasn’t calm.

  He let the blinds fall and went to sit in his high back chair that made a squeaky sound under his huge ass and he stepped on the bottom of his trench coat. His eyes fixated again on that blonde woman with a huge smile.

  It was her.

  It was without a doubt her.

  He suddenly closed his eyes with a sharp pain. He began to get information. It was a new vehicle. Where was he this time? Why did he abandon the vehicles of all the other kidnapped victims before they turned up dead? Why didn’t he receive information from the killer?

  These and many other questions had been tormenting him for twenty-four hours.

  71

  He was in another room with a dismal and fleeting light similar to the Peral submarine, the original one, the first one from the history books that was stuck on the beach shore, in Cartagena, Spain. It was rusty, but the yellow color was still visible, it took a long time to paint it that color. Now, it was just a shell threatened by the dampness. Where is all this humidity could be coming from? Some little metal red eyes were shining in a corner behind that submarine or a giant bottle in a horizontal position on top of an even more rusted iron mantle.

  Next to that, there was like a plastic tube, maybe aluminum, one of those that you can find in a kitchen’s bell extractor and that are connected to an electric motor. It was like a homemade pump with a compressor. There was a small window in the center of the submarine.

  Without a doubt, it was a vacuum chamber.

  When Hannah first saw it she was disconcerted, but she realized what
was going on and what was about to happen. That sicko was going to stick her in there and after that who knows.

  “What is this? What are you going to do? Answer me!” Hannah was excited but not in a good way, actually, it was the total opposite, she was scared and weak.

  “This will help you sleep a little. You must close your eyes in his presence.”

  Who was he talking about?

  Hannah was sweating and her eyeliner was darkening under her eyes. Her heart was beating erratically, much more than before. She tried to scream like crazy until she was out of air but she didn’t. She no longer had the courage because fear made her weak. She could’ve let the others know with that scream but those walls were thick, so thick that it felt like a Bunker but much more humid.

  Where was she?

  The sicko put his hot fingers around her wrists, like the boogeyman that lives under the bed but the hands were not cold, they were very hot instead, grabbing her, just like the boogeyman. Hannah didn’t have the strength to push back. Her legs were tingling, making her unstable. She discovered that when a person goes from fear to terror, she’s incapable of fighting back. She couldn’t even use her vocal cords because she was out of air.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Hannah insisted with her eyes out place. The blue hair, dried and brushed with a big blow dryer, flew in the air like a handful of rambling threads, as if she was in the middle of a tornado. Her head kept on spinning. She had the strength to do that but good things never last and her face was getting numb and she felt useless. Now she was dealing with a panic attack.

  The sicko pushed her slowly into the opening of the submarine or chamber and, since she couldn’t fight back with his soft hands, he pushed her inside. You could hear the thump of flesh, and he closed that little window that was the closest thing to a washing machine window. He placed some sort of metal object to secure it and to make sure no air would get into it. On the sides of the window, you could see a rubber that stuck like a suction pad to add more pressure to the chamber.

  After that, the sicko, with his eyes painted and a sarcastic smile with red lips, went towards the motor at the end of the tube.

  Hannah put her palms against the glass window and the sweat of her palms left two matt marks on the window. Her mouth was open and so were her eyes but you couldn’t hear anything. In the background, the repetitive music of Life in Mono was playing. It was overwhelming and it penetrated the walls like the whisper of loneliness, emptiness, and death.

  The sicko’s index finger flipped on the switch of the pump and the sounds of thumping began.

  Hannah began to dwindle in there, in a vacuum chamber, until all air was extinguished.

  The Sicko’s eyes were filled with ecstasy as he looked on.

  72

  This time, for a change, he would receive more information about the vehicle: a 1968 orange Ford Mustang. What the fuck was that woman doing with that car? It was a gem with a V8 engine with 195 horsepower. What a hot ride!

  The sign was not there.

  The car was somewhere in New England. Andrew knew that area by heart. There was a sound over yonder. It was the waves crashing onto the magical sand.

  But he knew it was Long Sands.

  How did he know?

  The pain was so intense that he put his head down, looking away from all those pictures. He started thinking he was seeing the same old scene over and over. It had already been more than twenty-four hours. Two days. Two victims and two cars. He could already see the third victim and was about to cross out the picture on the wall.

  Hannah Ackerman.

  What would he do now?

  Call Grayson?

  There was the doorbell; it was like a swaying sound that floated through the hot dense air, lazily losing its strength as if it was very tired.

  73

  It was nighttime this time. Around tenish.

  Old Tom went to take a piss by the lakeside when his flashlight focused on his face. His face was wrinkled and his penis was hidden in his crotch letting a drop of piss hit his pants.

  He didn’t know what to do under the pale moonlight that watched him silently. But he remembered that he had charged his old cell phone that very same afternoon.

  He remembered that it still worked.

  74

  “In only two days, two bodies have been discovered of the seven women that had vanished. I’m worried this will continue to keep happening.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Blurted Aria as she took a bite out of her salad. On the plate, there was hot bean soup and a toasted corncob.

  Landon just stared at her as if he wanted to say something bad to her, but he was able to contain himself. He wouldn’t do it in front of the kids. One was seven and the other was nine. They had their heads down and with their two glasses of chocolate milk. It was very late. Too late for these little ones. By this time they should have been in bed in their rooms dreaming of magical worlds in outer space, but that wasn’t the case. They fought and even screamed to be able to stay awake a tad longer.

  Too long.

  Aria was having a late dinner and was alone. Landon had already eaten. That night everything was different. Something unusual for them. All she needed now was to see Landon smoke a nice cigar and see him fart with one of those that tear you a new asshole.

  Nothing was normal that night.

  Nowhere.

  “I don’t know, I’m going back and forth thinking about the situation and I don’t want to think about these other girls being alive and then turning up dead in a couple of hours. Maybe I’m not being clear. It’s an intuition. That son of a bitch Parker didn’t do anything, he had nothing to do with this.” Landon’s pupils were dilated looking at her fine skin as if in a preamble to fuck.

  “You can see into the future?”

  Danny, one of the kids with long hair like a girl, lifted his head and showed off his chocolate mustache looking at his mother’s disconcerted face.

  “Are you crazy?” Landon smiled looking at the empty chair. “You think I’m John Smith?”

  “Who the hell is John Smith?” Her eyes opened a bit wider as if they were filled with water.

  “I can tell you don’t read many novels.” Landon put his hand firmly on the edge of the table.

  They were all in the dining room when the phone rang.

  Danny, with his head down, kept drinking his milk without stopping as if running out of air.

  “Fuck! Who could it be now?” Said Aria with an angry tone. Landon put his index finger on her lips to remind her not to speak like that in front of the kids. She made a smirk with her mouth.

  The phone’s ringtone got tangled with the air that the entire family breathed.

  Landon got up from his chair walking across the linoleum floor to get to the phone. He extended his right hand, he then put the phone to his ear while that ringing was interrupted by the children sipping their milk with their heads down.

  “Landon here, what’s up?”

  “Boss, it’s Jacob. I just received a call.”

  Landon thought he saw his bald head shining under the fluorescent lights on that strange night.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Old Tom called.”

  Landon bit down on his teeth and his eyes sunk in his eye sockets, he understood what was coming.

  And he wasn’t wrong.

  The little ones when into their rooms, way after he crossed the doorstep and slammed the door shut while his wife looked stunned at him.

  75

  “I wondered if you would like to have hot dogs even if I have to reheat them,” said Clarice with a big smile.

  Andrew frowned. Truth is he was really hungry and wanted some company that night. The headache subsided but the images were still there. She wasn’t a cop but someone who saw the killer and saw how he let Madelyne fall onto the rock. Andrew felt like he could tell her about Parker and all that stuff. He felt the need to trust someone and to talk about his fi
ndings, but he would never say that he had two mental powers and a shrink waiting for him.

  “Of course I’d love to have something to eat. And those hot dogs look amazing.” Andrew smiled and grabbed the plastic tray with bread, hot dogs and he saw something else: a can of beer also. He arched an eyebrow and couldn’t stop smiling.

  Clarice was standing in his doorway with her arms extended holding the tray that felt heavy at times. Anyone would say that she had had a bad experience that day.

  “I thought you hadn’t had dinner yet.” She said showing off her green eyes under the light of the entrance.

  “No, I actually had not. With all this going on I wasn’t thinking of eating. I only had water.” Andrew explained with a smile. He grabbed the tray and placed it on his belly.

  Clarice looked upon him astonished.

  “It’s all for you, I’ve already had dinner a long time ago.”

  “Come on Clarice, go inside. Don’t stay out here all night waiting for mosquitoes to bite you.” Andrew stepped aside and his teeth lit up under the lights.

  Clarice, with her hands-free and wearing a pink dress with a pressed cleavage, walked by Andrew and went inside the house looking for something more interesting.

  “What a beautiful home,” she said, but she was lying. The house was a disaster and it smelled, she had her hands behind her back like a school girl but maintained her smile.

  The door closed after Andrew kicked it, the frame made a sound as if being hammered. Closing the door made it hard to see the light of the moon that night.

  “Walk down the hallway. That’s where my office is.” Andrew explained with the tray in his hands. The scent made his lungs open up but his eyes were set on the beer can, he wanted to drink it really bad.

  Clarice pointed down the hall, like a ten feet distance. She frowned but, luckily, Andrew didn’t notice under that mean light.

  “Till the other end, you said?”

  “Yes,” Andrew said hesitantly. His ass started to move once Clarice began to walk towards the room, a hallway that was tattered and dirty.