The Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  He immediately recognizes who the head belongs to.

  In his overheated mind, he recalls the cell phone pictures. Images of Ray Fuentes’ abandoned Jeep-cruiser and the old cop himself bound with duct tape, down on his knees, knife pressed up against his neck.

  He can still hear Ray’s screams.

  Jude shines the bright Maglite onto the white, blood-drained face and he stares into his old friend’s milky eyes. He can’t say why he does it, or how he works up the courage to get himself to do it. But he takes a step forward, bends down, reaches out with his right hand, slowly brings his fingers to Ray’s eyelids. He’s only an inch or two from touching them when the snake crawls out from behind the head and, with its jaw wide open, lunges at his arm.

  Jude rears back abruptly, collapses onto his backside.

  By luck, or by divine providence, he has somehow evaded the strike.

  Heart thumping, Jude eyes the gray-black rattlesnake as it slides its way towards him along the pit floor. He knows he can’t give the snake a chance to reach him, pin him into a corner, strike at him a second time. He must try to kill the snake the easiest and quickest way possible or he will be no better off than Ray Fuentes.

  Standing, Jude waits for just the right moment when it is nearly upon him.

  That’s when he raises up his boot heel, brings it down hard on the snake’s head.

  Grinding skin and cartilage into the earth, he eyes the dead snake. He sprays the Maglite onto its crushed head, its blood-streaked skin and the thick white froth that oozes from its mouth and nostrils. Kicking its now lifeless, rubbery body into the far corner of the pit, Jude steps back over to Ray’s head. He bends down at the knees, reaches out with his left hand, closes the eyes. The skin feels cold and damp against on his fingertips. Just touching the dead skin makes his stomach jump and twist inside out.

  When it is done, Jude pulls himself up off the dirt floor.

  He raises up his head, faces four walls and a hopeless black night.

  He screams.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 2:35 A.M.

  Night vision scope strapped to his head, pressed tight against eye sockets, Black Dragon attempts to zoom in on the first-person Player. From his angle high up on an open rock face, he can easily make out the radiant green pit opening. But what he cannot do is see directly inside it. Still, he can’t help but imagine the wide-eyed, open mouthed, Help-me- Christ-oh-help-me-somebody-please! expression that surely must paint the Player’s face. Black Dragon pictures the super cop’s severed head! He contemplates the fun the Player must be having down deep inside the pit. It’s a shame he had to give the order to mutilate Fuentes. It’s a shame the old cop had to go and lose his head. But sometimes murder becomes a necessary component of a better kill game. And no way is Black Dragon about to drag all two-hundred-thirty pounds of doughnut bred policeman all the way out into the woods. So in the interest of the grand design, he instructed his kill game student, T-Bred, to make certain that Fuentes gave up his head but not before catching his screams.

  A glance at his Tutima wristwatch reveals that the game’s first level of play is nearly completed. Black Dragon knows that the time has come for the Player to use its brain, think of a way to free itself from the pit, start the rescue of objective number two. This will be the part of the game in which the Player must ignore the emotions swimming through his veins. Namely the sadness and desperation it feels for its soon to be dead wife.

  Wiping spittle from his injured mouth, Black Dragon jumps down from the rock, lands squarely on two feet. He pulls the satellite phone from the utility belt, depresses Send.

  Office of the Warren County Prosecutor

  Friday, 2:37 A.M.

  The County Prosecutor’s world is falling apart before her eyes. As she surely knew it one day would. In the deep night of an early blacked-out morning, she sits alone in her dim eighth floor village office, working on what is left of the Chevis, sinking deeper and deeper into her nightmare with every tug on a quart bottle that is quickly approaching bone dry.

  If only I could sleep . . . sleep forever . . . sleep the sleep of the dead.

  But she knows that for the remainder of this night, rest will prove impossible. It was power and respect she sought when she ran for County Prosecutor and won. It was approval, love, and an escape from her redneck past that made her want to win that election no matter the cost.

  Now it’s her inbred sense of responsibility that keeps the blonde-haired, hazel-eyed woman bound to her office chair, makes her unlock and open the top desk drawer to set a signed and sealed plain white No. 10-sized business envelope inside. It is certainly responsibility that makes her draw up the one page, single-spaced apology the envelope contains—an apology that took six drafts and eight hours to perfect. An apology that details her fall from grace—from her initial contact with Hector Lennox back when she was putting together her run for County Prosecutor to his first arrest for the tanning factory kill game to his second arrest for the murder behind Sweeney’s Gym to this final night just hours before the Preliminary Hearing. It’s all there—the details of her relationship with the scream catcher—neatly spelled out in a one-page, handwritten apologia.

  She closes the drawer, locks it with the gold key.

  Turning completely around in her swivel chair, she faces a massive Tongue Mountain that overlooks the village rooftops from a distance of a mile away. Maybe it is completely hidden by darkness, but she knows how the mountain valley and gorge rise green/brown and foreboding over the town. Like Vesuvius over Pompeii, the mountain represents protection and security for some. But for others it evokes a sense of doom and fright, especially during the annual summer rattlesnake migration.

  From where she sits, she makes out the thin pitch-forked lightning that strikes the peak’s rocky surface. And something else too. Something that resembles a light. Man-made light. Like a flashlight only brighter, flickering on and off and on again. A single, insect-like spec of light that cuts through the rich darkness.

  Could somebody actually be up there on a night like this? Could some stupid fool be braving the snake migration? Or is it just the whiskey playing tricks on my brain?

  Then it comes to her that someone might be trapped up there on Tongue—someone who has no hope of communicating with emergency officials. Not in this severe storm; not in this blackout. She might be finished as the Warren County Prosecutor, but the least she can do now is attempt to place a call to the authorities on behalf of the poor soul or souls trapped up there on the mountain.

  Lifting the phone from the cradle, she drunkenly attempts to finger 9-1-1. But the best she can manage is 0-#-and a following that, a complete whiff. Still she waits for a response and an operator to come on the line. But all she manages to call up is a good dose of dead air.

  Blackout . . .

  “Damn,” she slurs.

  Gripping the sides of her swivel chair, she tries to lift herself out. If she can’t get the authorities on the phone, she will go to them in person. After all, someone’s life is at stake on Tongue Mountain.

  Putting all her strength into lifting up her body, her brain feels as if it were soft ice cream oozing out her ears and nostrils. Her eyes roll back into her head. She falls back into the chair, nearly spills over onto her head.

  Sucking in a deep breath she whispers the words to an old Talking Heads song, “My God, what have I done?”

  Lowering her head into her hands, she tries desperately to sob.

  But there are no more tears for the proud and the damned.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 2:47 A.M.

  Skin shredding, tearing itself away from his bones. Jude swears that’s what it feels like when the cell phone vibrates and screams Ray’s voice in his pocket. He pulls the phone out, juggles it in his good hand, nearly drops it before thumbing Send.

  Time’s up, reads the text message.

  He can’t help but feel the pit floor dropping out from under him a
s he places the mouthpiece up against his face.

  “Kill you. I am going to kill you.”

  It’s supposed to be a scream. But his voice proves far less powerful. It emerges from his gaping mouth like a teeth-chattering whisper. Jude has proven himself a failure. He pictures Rosie’s face.

  Rosie exposed, alone. Her time is up.

  He pictures Lennox holding that iPhone before her mouth while pressing the silenced .22 caliber pistol barrel against the back of her skull.

  He hears the words, “Scream. For. Me.”

  Is the beast about to press the trigger? Jude dreads the two quick flashes that will accompany the two back to back trigger bursts. He will see them easily enough from all the way down inside the pit.

  Another couple of seconds pass. Or has it been a full minute?

  It’s hard to get a grip on himself, much less the passage of time.

  The cell phone screams again.

  The Player is trapped . . . Game over for the Player.

  “No, I will not die . . . Not here . . . Not like this.”

  But they are wasted words and Jude knows it. He is in no position to save himself, least of all Rosie or Jack. But that’s when something comes to him. An idea that flashes before his eyes with all the clarity of the Maglite.

  His position.

  His body—the way he stands vertically inside the pit. Of course, he can’t help himself by simply standing there doing nothing. The only way he might get the hell out of that pit is by shifting his position in order to conform to the pit walls.

  Closing the phone back up, he shoves it back down into his jeans pocket.

  He sees himself down flat onto his stomach on the dirt floor, turns his body so that head and feet are pressed up against the pit’s opposing narrow walls. With his face in the dirt, he can’t help but laugh. Maybe he’s in the process of losing his marbles, going entirely crazy, but he can’t help but giggle out loud like a crazy man. He has no idea why it takes him so long to figure it out. How if he stretches both arms and legs across the narrow width of the pit, it is possible for him to inch his way up and out by using all four limbs, just like a spider working its way out of a spider hole.

  The climb takes all available strength, all available will. His body is battered and torn. But by then he is full of rage and insanity. He also feels a light emerging from within himself. A bright white light that somehow fills him with the determination he needs in order to beat the pit.

  Jude climbs.

  It’s a slow, tedious process, raising right arm and left leg simultaneously. Then repeating the process with the left arm and right leg, digits scraping and shredding against the rough dirt walls. In that manner he inches his way up one hand-over-foot length at a time, wide open eyes staring down on the pit floor, on Fuentes’ head, but no longer afraid, all pain in hands and ribs be damned.

  He is working up a scream, but not the kind of scream Lennox wants to catch.

  I’m going to beat you at your own kill game you stupid fuck! You stupid fucking Black Dragon! I’m going to beat you no matter what you throw at me!

  When Jude feels the cold air blowing against his rain-soaked back, he knows he’s reached the top and his freedom. Without taking even an extra second to think about it, he exits the pit by throwing all momentum onto his left side, abruptly rolling himself over onto his back.

  For the moment, he allows the rain water to fall steadily onto his face.

  He is almost hysterical with laughter. He whoops, yelps, screams, voice so loud it drowns out the distant thunder and rain spattering against the leaves on the trees, against the earthen floor.

  In his heart emerges a new hope.

  Back up on his feet, Jude wipes the water from his eyes, approaches his wife.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 3:08 A.M.

  She is his best friend and his wife, his girlfriend and his life-partner, the mother of his unborn daughter, the woman he was to grow old with. Now her hands and wrists have been duct-taped together, along with her knees and ankles, her entire body wrapped in clear plastic. When he finds her she is lying on her right side as if purposely facing him, eyes closed, expression distant and vacuous, pallor clay-like.

  Her mouth has also been covered over or gagged with gray duct tape.

  She is dressed only in a knee length, white cotton nightgown, position fetal. Maybe Lennox didn’t plan for her to die on him that way; maybe the beast intended for her to live at least until the designated hour was up. Or maybe he had every intention to kill her off even before Jude had the chance to score a rescue.

  It all depended on the kill game’s grand design.

  But from where Jude stands in the dark, the cold rain running down his face and chest, he has no doubt about her absolute stillness, her petrified body. There is only the still body of his wife and the invisible child she bears (his unborn daughter) laid out on the pine-needled floor, the rain water spattering against the plastic, every lonely drop stenciled with the name “Rosie.”

  Chest heavy, pained, split down the center, Jude feels the oxygen drain from his lungs. He isn’t laughing now. He isn’t whooping or yelling. He isn’t cursing Lennox or God.

  He is fucking insane.

  Rubber legs give out from under him.

  He collapses.

  From down on his knees he clenches his left hand into a tight fist, pounds it against his chest. He howls like a dog. The bright Maglite shining on her still, sleeping face, he leans into Rosie, places lips to hers, embraces her through the plastic.

  It’s not what he expected.

  It is a cold, sodden kiss, entirely devoid of feeling or sensation other than lifelessness.

  A plastic kiss!

  With tears and raindrops streaming down his face, Jude forces himself up onto one leg, then the other. No matter the grief, no matter the shock he has to move himself.

  The kill game is not over.

  He and his son…they are still in Play.

  He can’t allow himself to make the same mistake twice. He must get to Jack before the boy, too, is allowed to die.

  Turning back to Rosie, Jude eyes her one more time as if to offer up a last goodbye to wife and daughter—as if such a goodbye is at all possible. Ripping his own heart out would be easier. He’s about to pull himself away from her, turn and make for the stream when he catches sight of her right eye springing wide open.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 3:12 A.M.

  Dropping to his knees, he tears off the plastic. As soon as he pulls the tape from her mouth, Rosie begins to cough and choke. A kind of yellow/gray bile rises up from her stomach, oozes out her mouth and lips. Without thinking, Jude pulls the nightgown back down over her midsection. At the same time, he rolls her onto her chest and stomach.

  “Let it out,” he insists. “Let it out.”

  “The baby,” Rosie mumbles between heaves and purges. “The baby.”

  “You’re alive . . . We. Are. Alive.”

  Coming from behind them, a shriek.

  The noise cuts through skin and bone, tingles the nerve endings in his body.

  Lennox is right behind us . . .

  “The baby,” Rosie chokes. Her body begins to shiver, quake. Her face takes on a tight, open-eyed panic. “Where am I? Where am I?” She is screaming now, alarm overwhelming her.

  “You have to get up,” Jude begs. “We have to leave this place.”

  Another shriek, closer now, from inside the pine trees not twenty yards beyond the rushing stream.

  “We have to save Jack.”

  Rosie shakes her head like it is all coming back to her in a wave of nightmarish recollection: the terrible night; the reason for her waking up in the middle of the woods.

  She whispers as though in agony, “The baby, Jude . . . The baby.”

  Jude pulls the rest of the plastic away from her legs and feet, thrusts his arms under her arms, proceeds to lift her as gently but forcefully as possible.

  �
��Try and stand,” he repeats. But in the back of his head, he’s thinking about the S.P. that crippled her insides just two days before. With his help, Rosie manages to get back up onto her feet. She stands wobbly, out of balance. She is a strange and desperate sight in her soaked-through nightgown with the deep woods for a backdrop, the rain coming down steady onto long dark hair, the distant lightning flashes that expose her pale face for an instant at a time.

  A third shriek comes from the same area across the stream, only closer this time.

  “We have to go. Now.”

  The Maglite poised on the fast moving whitewater out ahead of him, he takes hold of Rosie’s hand, leads the way.

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 3:20 A.M.

  Moving through the woods, the Maglite lighting their path, they pick up speed. By the time they make it to the stream bank, they are able to hit the water running.

  “Hold on as tightly as you can,” Jude spits, head and shoulders just barely above water, feet kicking beneath him against the current.

  It’s how I should have handled the stream all along. Head on. Sometimes you have to forget about thinking. You have to ignore the voices in your head that hold you back . . .

  He pumps and pumps. But the drag of the whitewater is too powerful, too relentless. Almost immediately, it begins to drag them downstream. He can’t imagine how Rosie is able to hang onto him without being swept away, her arms wrapped around his shoulders and neck, fingernails digging into his skin, his windpipe blocked from the force of her forearm pressed against it.

  If only he were able to shout for her to let go, let him breathe, he surely would. But making any kind of noise whatsoever is a physical impossibility.