Blackwater Lights

by Michael M. Hughes

  Micah shook his head, as if exasperated. “This isn’t the place. His eyes and ears are legion.” He grasped Ray’s wrist. “Come see me. Soon. Please.”

  Ray’s entire body felt charged by the man’s grip. He pulled his hand away. “You’ll have to tell me more. Like who you are. And why I should trust you.”

  Micah sighed. “You will need to trust me. And I pray you have the good sense to come talk to me. My door is always open.” He turned and walked slowly across the parking lot.

  Ray’s hands shook as he turned the key in the ignition. He wanted to trust the old man. He radiated a sense of power similar to Crawford’s, but he seemed genuine. When Ray pulled out of the parking lot, he looked in the rearview mirror. The old man stood watching him from behind his inscrutable lenses.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was almost midnight when an email arrived from Kevin:

  Ray,

  On plane to Pittsburgh. See you soon.

  K.

  Finally.

  And he’d get some answers. It seemed impossible that Kevin would have drugged someone. He’d gone to excessive lengths to stay on the good side of the law because he couldn’t stand thinking about the consequences if he got caught doing anything illegal. “One fuckup and you’re toast,” he’d once said. “Being in this business isn’t easy. You’ve got to be scrupulous. The feds send underage girls to me as bait once in a while, and my books get audited all the time. And if you don’t check the girls out—I mean really check them out, birth certificates, driver’s licenses—and document everything, you’re going to jail. And I won’t go to jail. I’ll fucking kill myself before I go to jail.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ray had said.

  “I’m not shitting, Ray. I will put a bullet in my head. I’ll hang myself. I’ll jump in front of a truck. Anything. I’ve seen what prison does to people. Fuck that. That isn’t living. I’ll make sure I never, ever go to jail.” There had been a seriousness in his eyes Ray had rarely seen—and fear.

  Drugging a girl and raping her? Never. It just didn’t make sense.

  But then, what did make sense anymore?

  Maybe Kevin had somehow pissed off Crawford, and Crawford had set Kevin up the same way they’d set him up. Of course that was it. And maybe the sheriff was lying. Lying because Crawford told him to—Crawford the moneybags supporter of the Blackwater PD. He’d find out soon enough.

  Even more disturbing was that Crawford and Lily knew why he’d been brought here long ago, as a clueless kid. Who had done it, and why. And what had happened to him in that hideous rock circle. Everyone had the answers, it seemed. Even Micah the preacher.

  Everyone except me.

  Despite the chaos in his head, he could barely keep his eyes open. He’d hardly slept in days, including the night he’d spent in bed with Ellen doing everything but sleeping. Maybe he could catch a few hours’ rest before Kevin showed up.

  Ray woke with the orange cat sleeping next to him, curled into itself, whiskers twitching. The rain smacked against the glass like fistfuls of gravel.

  “Ray?”

  He blinked, squinting against the light that’d just been turned on. Two faces merged into one. Kevin was soaked, his clothes drenched, his dark, curly hair plastered against his head. It felt like the middle of the night. Ray wiped at his eyes and looked around. How long had he slept?

  “You all right, man? Dude, you look like shit.”

  “I’m … okay.” He sat up slowly.

  “Cool. I see you’ve found my little friend.” He nodded to the cat. “Listen, man, I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I know you must want to wring my neck, but I’m wiped out. I haven’t slept in three days, and my flight was delayed twice, so I need to crash for a couple hours. Go back to sleep—you look like you need it.”

  Ray held out his hands. “Damn, man. I’m glad you’re home. But we need to talk. Seriously. Like now.”

  “Ray, just an hour. I swear, I—”

  “No. No. Now. Right now.”

  “All right. But I can barely see straight. I’ve been up for three fucking days dealing with cops and lawyers.” Black circles rimmed his eyes and his skin had a yellow cast. “What’s going on?”

  Ray shook his head. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Christ.” Kevin leaned back in the chair. He took a deep drag off his cigarette and stubbed it out. “I really should have said something. But I didn’t think you’d run into them. Or that they’d take an interest in you.”

  “What interest? What—who are they? What do they want with me?”

  Kevin opened his mouth, then silently shook his head.

  “Jesus, Kev, what is going on?”

  More silence. He seemed to be struggling to put his words together. “They’re not good, Ray. Not good at all.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out. But what do they actually do? And how do you know them?” He was beginning to feel like everywhere he stepped was another rug waiting to be yanked out from beneath his feet. And beneath the rug, a trapdoor.

  “I met Crawford in an online forum about PHP and other programming languages. He seemed like a smart, well-connected guy, with plenty of money to throw around. We got to be pretty tight. He had some property for sale, a good place to get away from everything. Cheap, too. A piece of mountain privacy in the middle of nowhere. Just what I needed.”

  “So … you’re friends with him?”

  “No, no. Hell no. Not after I found out what he’s really all about.” Kevin stepped to the window and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’d only been in my place for a week when he sent this girl to find me … a townie. She sat next to me in the Burro, all dolled up, and started turning on the charm. She had some coke with her, and I thought, what the hell, why not. She was cute. And young. And persuasive as shit. She wanted to get a hotel room, which was fine by me. So we partied a little. Maybe more than a little.”

  “And Crawford set it all up? Why?”

  “At first I thought he wanted money. I wish it had been—I’d have paid anything to get away from him. He had cameras all over the hotel room. He taped everything—the blow, the fucking, all of it. And God, the girl was nasty. She wanted me to cut her. Little cuts, nothing major, with this tiny X-Acto blade. And then she cut me. She licked up the blood—hers, mine, she’d just lap it up like a dog, getting off on it. Fuck, man, if she hadn’t been so good at working me—and I hadn’t been so coked up and drunk—I never would have gone so far off the deep end. She even got me to pretend I was raping her. Made me tie her up, shove a ball gag in her mouth, the whole nine yards. I swear, it was like I was hypnotized. I’m not into that shit at all, but she had me playing along like a trained dog. She was good. A total professional. And I fell for it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing. I left. The more I sobered up, the more it creeped me out. The blood—that’s what bothered me the most. The way she moaned when I made the cuts, licking them, rubbing blood all over herself. It was foul, man. It was sick. I swore I’d stay away from the freaky bitch.”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell yes. I thought I’d never see her again. But a few days later a package arrived in the mail. Just a note from Crawford and a DVD. I watched it. It was everything from that night. A three-camera shoot, close-ups, the whole nine yards, totally professional. The entire room was tricked out with hidden cameras. The drugs, the sex, the cutting, the rape fantasy, all of it. But it was edited to look like I was forcing her to do everything—like I was some kind of horrible sadist and she was just this innocent little thing. It was brilliant, the way he put it together. I figured he was either a drug kingpin or a mobster, and it was pure extortion. The note said he’d be calling me. And he did.”

  “So what did he want if it wasn’t money? I still don’t understand.”

  The window rattled. Kevin glanced at it, then turned backed to Ray. “He wanted to talk to me at length. In person. So I met him at his house. He treated me ni
ce, really friendly. Showed me his art, his film collection, rare books, stuff that costs so much even I couldn’t afford it. He has a statue from the Middle East. Some kind of demon, an ancient stone thing. He bought it on the black market after the Iraq war started—I’m pretty sure it was looted from a museum in Baghdad. I knew then I was dealing with someone way out of my league.” He poured a glass of bourbon and held it out to Ray.

  Ray declined. He needed to stay sharp.

  Kevin took a drink. “So I just came out and asked him what he wanted. He laughed, like it was a stupid question. ‘I want you to work with me,’ he said.”

  “That’s what he said to me, too.”

  “He knew all about my work in encryption, money transfers, and security, and he knew I had lots of connections in the porn business. He did a great job investigating me, that’s for sure. He needed help setting up some secure servers, and I mean really secure. He offered to hook me up with his team, a smart bunch of brainiacs and hackers, even an ex-NSA engineer. Mentioned all the good drugs he had, too, crazy shit I had never heard of. And the girls hanging around him—holy shit, Ray, it was like the Playboy Mansion. Not porn stars, either, just really beautiful women—major-league escorts like I’d never seen. And he offered me a boatload of cash. That’s a boatload of money to me, understand?”

  “But why not just hire you? Why set you up with that girl?” Kevin was hiding something, dancing around the surface, and Ray didn’t like it.

  Kevin finished the bourbon, grimaced, and poured another. “He didn’t want me to have a chance to refuse. Because of what he’s into. His real work. He knew I would say no if I knew what his real work was. He needed to reel me in and trap me.”

  Ray stared. Kevin’s bourbon sloshed in its glass. His friend wasn’t easily scared, but at the moment he looked terrified.

  “He’s into really dark shit, Ray.” Kevin closed his eyes. “I’ve done plenty of drugs in my wild days, but there are two things more addictive than any of them—power and money. And you know what happens when people find themselves with more power and money than you and I can even imagine?”

  Ray shrugged. “They want more?”

  He nodded. “Like a crackhead needs his next rock. They get the mansion, the vacation home, the boats, the young blond wife with the fake tits, the mistress with the fake tits, horses in a pasture, and a garage full of fancy cars. They spend as much as they can, but there’s always more to spend. And their stuff—their toys—start to lose their luster. They need new things to play with. Escorts, S&M dungeons, women dressed up like little schoolgirls, chicks with dicks, all that shit. Still pretty tame, but they always go darker and kinkier because it keeps getting harder and harder to get off. And then there’s hunting. Not deer or moose or shit like that, but endangered animals. Rhinos, elephants, gazelles. The ones you’re not allowed to kill. That’s how it progresses. Deeper and deeper into taboo. Crawford collects those kinds of people. Debased, obsessed, sick fucks with unlimited power and money. Government assholes, Mafia guys, but lots of corporate execs and bankers, too. They’re part of his club.”

  “But what does he do? Besides take rich perverts on safaris?”

  Kevin pushed his glasses up on his nose. “He does the hardest of hardcore. Not the fake rape bullshit, either, the stuff you see in email spam. He makes the real thing—torture, murder, the works. Just the absolute worst.”

  “Snuff films?” He had always heard they were urban legends. “They’re real?”

  “Oh yeah. Point-of-view footage that puts you right into the scene. The longer it takes, the more gruesome it is, the more it’s worth on the black market. I’m talking hours. Up close. In your face.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He didn’t even show me anything, he just kind of … hinted. I’ve been in this business long enough that I knew exactly what he meant. So I said no—that I appreciated his offer, but that I couldn’t work for him full-time because I needed to get back to Portland to run my business. I said I’d help him as much as I could when I came back here on vacations, but I couldn’t move here. I asked him if he’d keep the video of me and that girl to himself.” He swallowed his drink and poured another. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”

  Ray shook his head. “So what did he say?”

  “To my surprise, he said that was fine. It was my choice, and I could just work as a consultant from Portland. He told me the full-time offer would still be open if I changed my mind. So I planned to leave. Figured I’d dodged a serious bullet.”

  “Good. So he let you off?”

  Kevin’s laughter was grim. “The next morning the cops showed up. They hauled me in and tore up every inch of my place. Trashed everything. I was going to get nailed for rape, drug possession, and who knows what else.” His face sagged, drained of all color.

  “Jesus.” So Sheriff Morton hadn’t been lying.

  “I called my lawyers. Asked them who they would hire if they were in trouble. I got the best, two guys from Jersey—mob lawyers, basically. But they said it looked bad. Crawford was holding back the footage, but there was still probably enough to fry me, even without DNA. The girl was sticking to her story—that I’d gotten her drunk, drugged her, taken her to the hotel, and brutally cut her up and raped her while taping the whole thing to sell online. The motel cameras even had us going in and me leaving, so I had no alibi. And at any point Crawford could pull out his footage and send it to the DA, and I’d never see the outside of a cell again.” He held his fingers together. “I was this close to putting a bullet in my head.”

  “So what happened?”

  He sat his drink on the table. “What do you think?”

  “You …”

  “I said yes. What choice did I have? I’d work for him. I’d stay here in town as much as possible and set up his system, but I told him I didn’t want to see anything. I didn’t want to know what was on those servers. I know it sounds like a Nazi defense—just following orders—but I didn’t have any choice. A few hours later my lawyers called me. The girl had recanted. She said nothing happened, and she just wanted attention because her stepfather was beating and abusing her. The whole case fell apart.” He looked up at Ray. “Crawford pulled strings. That’s when I realized how many friends he has in high places. The level of control.”

  Ray realized he’d been holding his breath and exhaled. He sensed an opening. Since Kevin knew Crawford, maybe he could run interference. Get him to pull some of those strings and let him just get the fuck out of the miserable nightmare of a town, no questions asked.

  “I set up a file-sharing network, with the help of the guy from the NSA and this Uzbek hacker kid. Nobody, not even the U.S. government’s best and brightest, could see it, much less crack it. It looked like gibberish, just random network static. And I helped him get lights and video equipment through my studios’ accounts.

  “But I never hung around to see what was going on. I just sat in my office and did my job and got the hell out. Until one night, when one of the RAIDs fried. I had to work late into the night, and Crawford was pissed because he had some friends coming by, and he kept riding my ass to fix things. When I took a smoke break—it was after midnight, maybe a lot later—I saw a group of them walking through the garden. They were dressed in robes—long, red robes, right out of a seventies horror movie.”

  Ray squirmed.

  “So I followed. I stayed back as far as I could and followed their flashlights. They took a trail, and it went really far into the woods. I thought about turning back, but I had to see what was going to happen. I needed to know. They came to this spot—a really old, creepy circle of rocks.”

  “I’ve been there,” Ray said.

  Kevin blinked. “You have?”

  “I’ll explain after you explain.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He wiped his lips. “They had a big fire going. It looked like Stonehenge, crazy druid ritual shit. And they were chanting. It freaked me the fuck out. I turned and ran back to the house. That’s when
I realized I didn’t have a clue what was really going on—they were playing with shit I’d never heard of. You know I never believed in God or the devil or any of that superstitious crap, but what I saw changed me. When they came back later they were glowing. I mean, you could feel the raw energy pouring off them. It was like they were on fire. I don’t know how else to describe it. It scared me, Ray. More than anything else. Whatever they were doing, it was … feeding them.”

  An icy wave washed up Ray’s spine.

  “Whatever it is—occult rituals, witchcraft, whatever—the shit works. It’s real. A couple of times I could feel Crawford digging into my mind. Like he was just going through a file cabinet, picking out my thoughts.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Kevin paced. “One day he asked me to come for a walk with him through the gardens. Anytime he pulled me aside I got nervous, but this time I knew something was up, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. He said I was part of his family—that’s what he called it, his family, like Charlie fucking Manson. And then he said, ‘Let me show you something.’ He pointed to a bird. Up on a branch. Just a normal bird, like a grackle or something, sitting in the branches. He pointed to it, and the bird fell out of the tree. Dead. Like it had been shot.”

  Thunder rumbled. The windows shook.

  “See?” Kevin pointed out the window. “Weird shit like that happens even when you talk about him. Lightning. Glasses falling off shelves. Sirens. Dogs barking.”

  “Kev, cut it out. I can’t believe that. He’s a criminal. A sick fuck. But he’s not some kind of evil wizard. He’s got your head messed up. Like they did to me, with the drugs—they mess with your head and convince you that you’re going nuts.”

  Kevin shook his head. “No. No. It’s real. It’s really, really real.”

  Ray stood. “But Jesus, Kev, what does he want with me? You have skills. You’re useful to him. I’m a public-school teacher. What the hell use am I to someone like him?”