by Jonas Saul
It was all starting up again.
“Let’s go,” the man said.
He was one of the guards from earlier. She stepped into the hallway and followed him on legs that didn’t wobble as much as before. She’d eaten the entire meal they’d offered her, and it had buoyed her system, offering electrolytes to her blood to replace those lost from her terrifying water experience.
The man led her past the office where she had met the boss and into an adjoining room.
As soon as she entered it, she gasped and brought her hands up to her mouth, stifling a scream. Everything in her soul shouted at her to run.
The room was some kind of torture chamber. A medieval stockade sat in one corner. A table with at least fifty metal tools and gadgets ran along one wall. This room didn’t have a dropped ceiling. Chains hung from the metal rafters above.
On her right was a square unit on wheels that appeared to be an electrical generator of some kind. She started to step backwards. She could feel it in the air. A kind of tension, thickened by the pain these instruments caused.
Someone bumped into her from behind.
“Leaving so fast?”
She turned to look into the empty eyes of the Harvester of Sorrow.
“Stay, join us, watch the show.”
She tried to speak, then waited, swallowed once and tried to find her voice. “What … show?”
“You’ll see. There is one thing I can tell you. We haven’t located your husband, so this isn’t about your pain yet. Yours is coming. Of that, I am sure.” His smile reminded her of an open coffin smile on a dead man.
Someone yelled in pain from down the hallway.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the rosary her new friend had given her. Rolling it through her fingers, Rosina eased away from the door and stepped toward the wall that was farthest from the torture equipment.
The squabbling in the hallway grew louder.
Sorrow flipped a switch and turned on a machine. She had no idea what its purpose could be.
Then the door filled with men. For a brief second, she thought she’d seen Darwin among them. She almost yelled out in protest.
Four men walked in, escorting the undercover cop.
No, not my friend, my savior.
His hands were behind his back. Blood smeared his face and fear clouded his eyes.
“Tie him to those chains,” Sorrow ordered.
Rosina watched in horror. Sure, she’d seen horror movies before. Hostel, Saw, and other gore-fest flicks. But that was acting, and it was scripted. This was real. She had no idea people would do this kind of thing to others.
They turned the cop around to tie him up to the chains, his hands cuffed behind his back.
She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs at the injustice. She wanted every law official in Italy to watch so they would enact stronger laws against organized crime.
A nice man, a cop, was about to be tortured, or worse, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The burning rage inside fired her up. In that moment, if she could have killed the men around her, she would have. Even though that would bring her to their level, it would be a pleasure. Then she and the cop could walk from the building, their heads held high because they did a good deed.
She was curious how the desire to murder in cold blood could so easily come to her. She wondered how, in the face of violence, she could accept that notion as her own.
Maybe that’s the human condition. Could be we’re all doomed.
The boss entered the room. He smiled at her.
“So glad you could join us. I wanted you present. There’s a reason and I think you’ll play a vital role in what is about to take place.”
What the hell is he talking about?
He stepped over to the cop. The men had hooked him up to the chains that hung suspended from the ceiling in a way that his arms were rigid and his mid-section couldn’t move. It looked painful because his shoulders seemed to be taking most of the weight, his feet barely able to touch the ground.
“So, tell us your secret,” the boss said.
The cop looked away, as if he knew what was coming and nothing would stop them.
The boss turned to Rosina. “I was talking to you. Tell all of us your secret.”
“What … what secret?” she stammered.
“That rosary. Where did you get it?”
“I, ahh.” Rosina looked down at it in her hands. She looked back up at the boss. “I found it in my room.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Did you now?”
The room was silent. The only sounds were the clinking and rattling of the chains as the cop tried to hold himself steady.
“Let me ask you again. I will give you a second chance. I don’t believe in lying, but second chances are okay under certain circumstances, and this is a certain one. Where did you get that rosary?”
Rosina looked at the cop’s bruised face. Blood dripped from his right eye, his mouth, and a cut on his left eyebrow. His body language spoke of defeat. When he looked up at her, she almost cried. He nodded with his eyes and tried to smile.
It’s okay, he said. Go ahead. Tell the truth.
“I got the rosary from …” She couldn’t condemn him. She couldn’t say it. Then she thought of Darwin, dabbed at the tears that started to fall off her cheeks and selfishly said, “I got the rosary from him.”
“From who?” the boss asked.
Rosina pointed at the man in chains.
“And why would he give you such a thing?”
“Maybe,” she cried fully now, her body wracked with sobs. She couldn’t hold it back. In a room full of men as mean as these men were, she just couldn’t hold it back. “Maybe because he wanted me to have a little faith before I died here.”
The old man raised his index finger. “Or maybe he is working against us. Tell me, what did he say to you when he handed you your little present?”
“I don’t remember,” Rosina answered defiantly.
“Maybe I could jog your memory.”
The old man motioned for his men to move to her.
“No, no,” she screamed through the tears.
“Oh, don’t be such a crybaby. We’re not going to hurt you. Yet.”
Two men stood on either side of her, their arms crossed. She knew what that meant. Don’t move. No matter what you’re about to see, don’t move.
She was pretty sure whatever they were going to do, she couldn’t watch anyway. She dropped her face into her hands and closed her eyes.
Someone grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. She screamed at the pain.
“You will watch everything,” the old man said. “When I have finished here, you will get another chance to answer my question.”
Each man on either side held an arm and the side of her head so tightly that even the slightest movement caused major pain, trumping any migraine she may have ever had.
Oh, yes, I could kill every one of these pathetic human beings. Just give me the gun and line them up. I’d sleep better at night knowing they’re dead.
“Sorrow, I want you to perform a hamstringing on our fine gentleman here.”
Sorrow really is his name? So fucked.
The Harvester grabbed a long blade, a sword of some kind, and a roll of white cloth and made his way over to the cop.
The old man turned to Rosina. “We’re just going to make a little cut and then bandage it up. Don’t worry, there won’t be too much blood. It’ll be over in a second and then we can get on with our little chat.”
Harvester got set up pretty quick. He unrolled two long strips of the cloth and then got down on his knees. The other two men in the room walked over and got down on one knee in front of the cop and each man grabbed a leg.
“If you close your eyes, I will rip off your eyelids with a pair of pliers and force you to watch the next session as your eyes dry themselves out of your head,” the boss warned her.
Rosina watched as the Harve
ster of Sorrow applied his blade to the jeans above the knee and walked around each leg. The bottom half of the cop’s pants fell to the floor. The men who hunkered below him grabbed his legs again and held on tight.
He slid the long blade into the back of one of the cop’s knees and sliced back and forth, almost severing his lower leg. Then he worked on the back of the other knee. The cop screamed an unholy wail for ten seconds before his head dropped and he passed out.
Please Lord, have mercy on him.
Rosina cried hard. The men holding her let go and she fell to the floor.
The old man was talking again. “That’s called hamstringing. My colleague here has cut the two large tendons at the back of the knees, thereby crippling this man for the rest of his life. We’re bandaging him up because we wouldn’t want him to bleed to death, now would we?”
She couldn’t believe it. Where was she? Who was she? This was her honeymoon. They were in Rome getting married because their parents wouldn’t see eye to eye. And now she had witnessed something called hamstringing, an image she knew she would never be able to put out of her mind.
She felt a section of her emotional well-being leave. A deep part of her, and it would never come back.
Innocence.
She would never be the same. Whatever had hardened these men to make them who they are today, they were passing it along to her, but she didn’t want it. But it was too late. She opened her eyes. The room was still there. Everything remained real. It wasn’t a nightmare.
“I will start asking you questions again,” the old man said as he stepped closer to her. He seemed to be enjoying this. Maybe in the end it was all an act for the men under his command. He needed to show this kind of absolute strength so no one would get out of line. She certainly hoped that was the reason, because if they were enjoying this, then there really was no hope for humanity.
“Do not waste my time and don’t lie to me,” he continued. “Why did that man give you the rosary? What did he say to you after delivering your dinner?”
Rosina made up her mind in under a second. She couldn’t play here. The rules were too foreign. This was the definition of serious. Life and death choices, and answers, seemed to be the currency.
“He said he would help me escape.”
The words carried a betrayal she’d never before imagined could come from her. How could she do that after the man had bestowed hope in her again? What kind of person was she?
“Anything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he tell you anything else? Does he have a secret? Don’t make me draw it out of you.”
They know. Somehow they already know. This is a game. The old man is drawing it out to show me and the men what he’s made of.
“He said he was working undercover. But you already know that,” Rosina said.
The old man half-smiled and turned away.
“I want this cop to leave here with a Glasgow smile so all his other cop friends can know what happens when you attempt to betray me or my family.”
She shuddered to think what a Glasgow smile was, but felt relief at the words leave here. That told her the cop could go eventually. He would be free. Who knows, with medicine today, maybe they could fix his legs and he could walk normally again.
The Harvester of Sorrow walked around to the front of the unconscious cop and surveyed his face. The thick bandages had staunched the blood flow.
The Harvester nodded at his two helpers and they stepped closer. Then Harvester pulled out a small utility knife and stuck it just inside the corner of the cop’s lips.
With a flourish of the wrist, he sliced the cop’s cheek all the way to the ear on each side. The cop awoke from his blackout and screamed.
She watched in horror as the Harvester jabbed the utility knife in and out of the cop’s stomach, and his scream continued, louder, animal-like.
The grotesque mask of open flesh was too much to bear. Rosina looked down at the floor, afraid to close or avert her eyes entirely.
After a moment the cop fell silent.
“What did you do?” the old man asked.
“Nothing, sir. We always stab them a few times to make them scream. It opens up the wound quite nicely.”
“I realize that, but he looks dead.”
The Harvester stepped forward and touched the cop’s neck under the jaw. Then he turned back to the boss.
“I’m sorry. His heart must’ve stopped.”
The boss’s cell phone rang.
“Excuse me,” he said, and turned from the Harvester.
“Speak,” the boss commanded into the phone. After a moment he said, “I understand. Thank you.”
“It appears we’re going to have company. Assemble all your men and head downstairs.”
“What’s happening, boss?” the man to Rosina’s right asked.
He looked at her and pointed. “Her husband is here and he brought Paul with him, all the way from Termini Station. Now Paul is lying dead in the road like a fucking dog, his head crushed. Paul still had his weapon on him. That means that Darwin has his own, or he doesn’t use one. Killing Big John was just the beginning. Now he’s found us, and he sent us a signal.” The old man looked around the room. “Be aware. Killing Paul like that in front of our building is a warning. Shoot on sight. We can play with this one later.” He gestured to Rosina. “I want Darwin Athios Kostas dead within the hour!”
Chapter 8
Darwin stood at the back of the building. He had to get inside. There was no other option left. The sun had dropped past where he normally allowed himself to be outside. He knew, rationally, there was nothing to fear just because it was dark. But that was the thing about a phobia—there was nothing rational about it.
His therapist called it achluophobia. He also diagnosed Darwin with aichmophobia—a fear of sharp or pointed objects, such as needles and knives. Darwin had looked them up and felt he really had angrophobia—a fear of becoming angry. He did horrible, unspeakable things when he got angry. It became a fury without limit. The only things that caused that fury were being in darkness or having something poking and prodding him like a needle or a knife.
Thanks, Stepmom. You’re a real sport. Rot in hell.
The heavy darkness pressed down on Darwin. It closed in tighter. He felt marked distress. His ability to function and think properly grew more difficult by the second. If he didn’t find a door that opened to a lighted area within minutes, he would have no choice but to break the nearest window.
The front of the building was the wrong way to go. Too many people would be near the road. He even saw men running from the Fuccini building’s front doors earlier. If only he could walk through them, step up to Mr. Fuccini and discuss terms.
Yeah, right. Maybe in the Wizard Of Oz, but not here, not now.
After killing another of the Fuccini men, he was sure that Mr. Fuccini would mark him for death, if he hadn’t already.
Darwin ran to the two large, green garbage bins at the back of the building, under a bright streetlight that shined onto them. He looked at the sky, a dark black-blue color, the sun’s presence all but gone.
Rosina, I’m coming for you, baby.
Standing under the light, he scanned the building for a way in. There was one door with a Keep Out sign and a large hole in the wall about seven feet up. The garbage chute, he assumed.
No way am I climbing up through there.
He had to find another way in. Time was running out. The police would be scouring the area looking for the guy who threw Paul into the traffic.
He ran over to the Keep Out door and tried the knob. Locked.
Shit. Think, dammit, think.
A pile of broken skids were piled haphazardly about eight feet high, and he leaned under the chute to look up. It reeked of garbage and looked very black up in there. He knew, even if it had a velvet ladder leading up with a neon Welcome sign beside the hole, there would be no way he would climb into it. Not with how dark it wa
s.
Voices. Men talking. He cocked his ear and listened. They were on the other side of the Keep Out door.
Darwin ran back around the skids, careful to watch for the exposed nails, to the other side of the garbage bin and dropped below sight. The bins were on wheels. At least there was that.
