A Killer Harvest

by Paul Cleave

  “Your girlfriend will have one,” Ruby says. “We can call the police on the way.” She leans forward and takes his hand in both of hers and looks up at him. “Where is your girlfriend? Is she coming back?”

  “She’s coming back. She’s getting the car,” he says. “Also . . . she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “She likes you,” Ruby says. “I can tell.”

  “I like her too.”

  “Yeah, I can tell you do. I hope you pluck up the courage to tell her.”

  He tries to help her down the stairs, but she says no, and instead she crawls. She gets to the bottom just as a car pulls up outside. “Olillia’s here,” he says.

  Within seconds, Olillia rushes through the front door. “It’s getting cold out there,” she says, rubbing at her arms. “And there’s no easy way to say this, but we have a small problem. The car doesn’t have a backseat.” She looks at Joshua. “I can come back for you,” she says. “Or we can call your mom. Or Detective Vega.”

  “Let’s call Detective Vega,” he says.

  “Help me get Ruby out to the car first,” she says.

  Ruby lets them help her out to the car. They support her between them so she has one arm around Joshua and one around Olillia. It’s a struggle, but they get her into the passenger seat. Olillia was right—it is getting cold out here. The wind is picking up. Leaves and twigs and pinecones are falling to the ground. Olillia tries calling Detective Vega. There’s still no answer. She leaves a message, saying it’s urgent.

  “I guess we’ll drive directly to the hospital,” she says. “Maybe Ruby can call her parents on the way too.”

  “Good idea. Just one thing—I’ve lost my phone. So make sure you come back, huh? Or at least send somebody back,” he says. “I don’t recall seeing a landline in there.”

  “You think your cell could be inside? Maybe it slipped out of your pocket since we’ve been here.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll dial it.”

  She dials it. It rings for a while. They listen, but don’t hear a ring inside the house.

  “It was on vibrate,” he says.

  She calls it again. They listen harder. Nothing.

  “Is it set up to be tracked if you lose it?” she asks.

  “Oh yeah, it is!”

  “Let’s track it,” she says.

  She launches an app on her phone. Joshua puts in his details and a moment later a map appears on the screen. There’s a blue dot in the center of it. It’s moving.

  “Somebody must have it,” she says. She zooms out. “Look, it’s coming towards us!”

  “It must be Detective Vega,” he says. “She must have found my phone. She would have seen all my texts to you.”

  “You didn’t have a passcode on it?”

  “It does, but it wasn’t set to activate for five minutes. If she found it within that time she’ll have had access to everything.”

  “We didn’t know about the cabin at that point,” she says.

  “She must have figured it out the same way we did.”

  “Well, at least it means you won’t have to wait as long out here by yourself.”

  “Also means I start getting in trouble even sooner.”

  She leans forward and hugs him and holds on for a while, then pulls away. “You did good, Boy Who Used to Be Blind. Your dad would be proud.”

  He thinks his dad would be.

  “I’ll see you at the hospital,” she says.

  He watches them drive away, and then he goes back inside and waits for Detective Vega.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Detective Vega has a real doozy of a headache, one that follows her from a dream she can’t remember into the back of a trunk she only wishes she could forget. She doesn’t know how long she’s been unconscious—maybe a few minutes, maybe half a day. If the man who took her is the person who saved Joshua yesterday, she can no longer think of him as the Good Samaritan. He is now the Politely Spoken Bad Samaritan. She can’t escape the idea that this is exactly the kind of guy Ben Kirk and Mitchell Logan would have donated to medical science.

  Even with the pillow, she’s still getting beaten up by the drive. She always figured it would be an uncomfortable way to travel—worse, even, than flying economy on a long-haul flight. She wonders if they’ve already stopped to pick up whatever—or whoever—it is the Bad Samaritan wants to pick up.

  Something is buzzing in her pocket, and it takes her a moment to make sense of it since her own phone is broken—it’s Joshua’s phone. It’s inside an evidence bag inside her jacket pocket. It stops buzzing. If she can get to the phone, she can call for help.

  The car takes a bend, accelerates, then stays on course. They’re traveling fast. They’re probably on a motorway. She wriggles her body, twisting into different angles, but the handcuffs and duct tape make the phone impossible to reach.

  At least for now.

  The car slows. It turns off. The surface of the road changes from smooth to bumpy. They continue at a slower pace. The car hits a hole and she’s thrown up against the ceiling of the trunk. It’s like being inside a washing machine. After a couple of minutes, the car slows even further, then it comes to a stop. The engine dies. She can hear it pinging and ticking. She can feel the weight of the car change as the Bad Samaritan climbs out. She can hear his footsteps. He pops the trunk, and right away she can hear the wind through the trees and a river nearby.

  “Hey there, welcome back,” he says, the big smile still on his stupid face. “I hope that wasn’t too bad. Take a look at what I stopped off to get you on our way.” He holds up a dog collar and a leash. There’s a price tag hanging from it. “I know, it’s not conventional,” he says, “but you’ll get used to it, I promise, and I did make sure to get one in your color.”

  The collar is pink. She’s never been a fan of pink, and never been a fan of people who think all girls should be.

  He attaches the collar around her neck.

  “There,” he says. “It looks good. You look like a real princess. Come on,” he says, and he tugs on the leash, pulling her forward, the collar tightening around her throat. She rolls out and lands heavily on her shoulder.

  “Oh no, oh no, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Mr. Bad says, “but really it’s both our faults. Your fault for not trying hard enough, and mine for expecting more from you.” He tugs the leash again. “Come on, up you get, nobody likes a straggler.”

  She can’t get to her feet—there’s still duct tape around her ankles and legs, some of it connected to the cuffs around her wrists. Best she can do is get upright onto her knees. She looks around, trying to get a sense of where he has brought her. There’s a modern cabin with a boat parked on a trailer out front. She must be far outside the city, in an isolated area where one could make a lot of noise without disturbing any neighbors. The wind is getting stronger. Mr. Bad Samaritan cuts through the tape holding her legs together.

  “Stay on your knees,” he says, and he tugs the leash and she shuffles towards the cabin, following him. Her knees hurt. They’re digging into pebbles and hard dirt and twigs and other annoying, natural debris. She’s always loved nature before, but now she hates it. The first few drops of rain hit her face.

  They reach the cabin. Mr. Bad tries the door.

  “Well, this is fantastic,” he says. “It’s unlocked! I have more good news, too—the previous owner has passed on so there’s nobody to disturb us.”

  She suspects that the previous owner may have been Vincent Archer. Perhaps the cabin belongs to his rich parents, who, in all their wisdom, didn’t feel like telling her about this place. It’s hard to think of an innocent reason for that, even though there must be many, including the simple one of them just not thinking about it. But the cop inside her, the one who knows how things really are, pictures Mr. and Mrs. Archer coming out here and doing all the same kind of weird shit their son was doing.

  Mr. Bad leads her inside. It’s nice in here. The c
arpet is friendly to her knees. There’s nice furniture and nice appliances that she gets to see from her level. There are no articles pinned to the walls, so maybe this place doesn’t belong to Vincent Archer.

  “Why, this is spectacular,” he says. “All the modern comforts of home,” he says, and he removes the duct tape from across her mouth. She doesn’t say anything. “First thing we have to do is get rid of the dog,” he says, and pulls the gun out of the waistband of his pants. “I don’t want one that somebody else has already loved.”

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Sadly, I must,” he says. “It’ll be better this way, trust me.”

  There’s a kennel in the utility room. She thinks about the bags of dog food on the table in Vincent Archer’s house. Mr. Bad crouches down so he can see inside. “Well now, it’s empty,” he says, and he seems unsure what to do next. “I used to dream about her,” he says. “The woman who lived in the kennel. They treated her like a dog. I mean, quite literally like a dog. Isn’t that the most wonderful thing?” he asks, and his big smile gets bigger. “Such a grand idea! They put a chain around her neck like the one I have around yours. They gave her water out of a bowl to drink and they made her eat dog food, and I saw all of this, I saw it so vividly in my dreams. I came here, and it was the same building, the same river, the same boat parked up outside. I called to her through the wall, and she was here!”

  “Ruby Carter,” she says. The woods, the river—this must be out in the forest where she went missing.

  “I never knew her name.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “How would I know that?” He bends down and picks up what looks like some kind of metal shoe. “My, look at these!” he says, and his face brightens into a big smile. “How wonderful they’ve been left behind! They’re even in your size! Come on, let’s get these on.”

  He removes her shoes and, with the use of some box wrenches lying on the floor, puts the metal shoes onto her feet and tightens the bolts. There are large spikes on the inside making it impossible for her to stand. She wonders where Ruby is. Is she buried out here? Is that one of the last things Vincent Archer did? Is Andrea Walsh buried out here too?

  “From now on, you crawl like a dog.”

  “I need to use a bathroom,” she says.

  “Why? So you can try something?”

  “I really need to pee, that’s all.”

  Slowly he nods. “I will have to watch you, just to make sure you don’t try anything.”

  “I’m not going to try anything.”

  “I’m still going to have to watch you. I know it sounds horribly inappropriate, but I’m afraid there’s no other way.”

  “I can’t go with you watching me.”

  “Also, it can’t be in the bathroom, it has to be outside, up against a tree.”

  “I’m not doing that,” she says.

  “Then don’t go,” he says.

  “You’re being unreasonable,” she says.

  “Excuse me? I’m the one here giving you options, and I’m the one being unreasonable? You have a lot to learn about manners.”

  “You want me to go all over the floor?”

  “Do you want me to put you down?”

  “I’m not your dog,” she says.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he says. “The sooner you accept it, the easier it will be.”

  He tugs on the leash. Her instinct is to get her feet under her, but the spikes will sink into her. She tries to imagine how far she could get with them like that, and decides not far at all.

  “You need to uncuff me,” she says. “How can I crawl like a dog with my hands cuffed behind me?”

  “Not well, I admit,” he says, “but I’m not uncuffing you.”

  “You can handcuff my hands in front of me.”

  He thinks about it for a few seconds. “I guess I was always going to have to do that,” he says. “But if you try anything, I will beat you.”

  He undoes the cuffs and does them up in front of her. In that moment she wonders if she could try something, but decides against it. She has the phone. That’s where her escape lies. Mr. Bad pulls forward on the leash and forces her to crawl like the dog he wanted. He leads her into a lounge and he stands by the window and tells her she has to sit on the floor. She thinks about Tracey, and wonders if she’ll ever see her again.

  “Can you tell me who you are?” she asks, doing her best to sound friendly.

  “Until a few weeks ago, I was nobody. Now I’m somebody with a pet.”

  She wants to tell him he’s insane. Instead she says, “You don’t need to do any of this.”

  “Need to? No, I don’t suppose I need to do anything, but I want to. You do see the difference, right?”

  “From down here on the floor chained up like a dog, it’s hard to,” Vega says.

  He laughs. “Like a dog,” he says. “Like a dog. Isn’t it all so terribly wonderful?”

  “You’re half right,” she says.

  “I don’t understand,” he says, turning from the window to face her. She can see her gun tucked into the waistband of his pants.

  “It’s just terribly,” she says. “There’s nothing wonderful about it.”

  “Oh, I see, I see!” He claps his hands together. “That is quite funny, quite quick. I like that. I have chosen well.”

  “You want to tell me about the dreams?” she asks, because when he mentioned them earlier it reminded her of Joshua.

  He looks confused. “What dreams?” he asks, still smiling his big ol’ smile.

  “You said before you’d been dreaming about the woman who was kept out here.”

  “The dog,” he says.

  She’s not going to say the dog. “What did you dream about?”

  He crouches down to her level. “Are you sure you want to know? They were quite unpleasant.”

  “Tell me,” she says.

  “Now, I don’t want to be Mr. Negative here,” he says, “but I’m pretty sure you only want me to tell you because you’re hoping to learn something that will help you.”

  “No,” she says. “I think that if I’m to be a good pet, I need to know how to keep you happy. To keep you happy, I need to know more about you. I want to be a good doggy,” she says.

  Mr. Bad laughs. “My, you really are quite something, aren’t you,” he says, but what that something is, he doesn’t say.

  “The dreams,” Vega says.

  “The dreams. Very well, then. They were full of blood. You wouldn’t believe the amount of blood there was.” He turns away and looks back out the window, but she can tell he’s not looking at the view, he’s looking back at the dreams. “Buckets of it, all if it getting splashed around. It made no sense. I started to dream of women screaming. I used to hate horror movies, you know. My wife . . . I should tell you that I’m married,” he says, and she looks at his hand and yes, sure enough, there’s a gold band on his ring finger, and she wonders if he’s killed her. “And before you ask, I know that she wouldn’t approve of this, of any of this.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Yes,” he says, and she wonders if he’s killed them too. “A boy and a girl. Seven and four.”

  “If you let me go, you can go back to them. You haven’t hurt me. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You don’t get it,” he says, “and I understand that, because I didn’t get it either, not at first. Not until I had the dreams, and the urges that came with them. Before then, well, as I was saying, I couldn’t even watch a horror movie. All that blood . . . I’d have to turn away. I can’t watch or read anything that’s too violent. It upsets me. I’m the person who faints at the sight of blood, can you believe that? You ask who I am? Well, that’s who I was. Can you imagine the effect dreams of blood have on somebody who faints at the sight of a cut finger? To dream of women screaming, of all that blood . . . can you imagine?”

  “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “I know what you’re doing
,” he says. “You’re trying to get me to talk about my family. You’re hoping we can relate, and that I’ll let you go. That’s not going to happen.”

  “The dreams,” she says, “did they start after the surgery?”

  The cabin goes so quiet it’s as though somebody has thrown a switch to kill every tiny bit of sound. Five seconds pass. Ten. It’s not as quiet as she thought, because she can hear the wind swirling around outside. “How did you know about the surgery?” he asks.

  “You had it what, three weeks ago?”

  “Do you know me?” he asks.

  “It’s called cellular memory,” she says. “The dreams are real, but they’re not yours.” She explains it to him. Memory being stored in all the cells of a body. Cellular memory is a guy wanting to take up ice skating after receiving an ice skater’s heart. It’s a woman wanting to take up painting after receiving a painter’s liver.

  “It’s a man wanting to take up killing after receiving a serial killer’s eyes.” She can see him thinking about it. She can see him making the connection. “Your donor,” she says. “He was a murderer. When he died, his organs were harvested. What you’re experiencing are his memories. Your desire to do this to me, to keep me like a pet, that’s not your desire. That belongs to the man who died. How did you find this cabin?”

  “I was drawn to it,” he says. “I came here a week ago. I had to, to make sure the place was real. I thought I was going crazy, but hey, the place is real. I spoke to the dog and she spoke back, and I must admit that scared me. She didn’t scare me, and the cabin didn’t scare me, but the entire situation scared me. How could I know about this place? All I know is that I did.”

  “And Vincent Archer? You were drawn to him too?”

  “No,” he says. “I was driving back out to the cabin the following morning when I saw him coming out from the turnoff. I recognized him from the dreams, so I turned the car around and followed him. Now that he’s dead, I figured, you know, that this cabin could be mine.”

  “That’s why you were at his house today,” she says. “You were going to look for any reference to the cabin and, if you found it, you were going to destroy it, so nobody would come out here.”