She continued grinning in front of him and her exertion at keeping the tension on his shoulders looked effortless. Through the pain, he thought she must be very strong for her size.
She eased off and let his hands go. “Hello, Benjamin.” She stared, expectantly.
He gasped and said, breathless, “What? I don’t…”
She pulled up on his arms again and he screamed this time. He felt something give in his right shoulder and the pain increased immensely. She had probably separated his shoulder.
“Hello! Hello! Stop! Please!” He whimpered as she released the tension.
“That’s better,” the silky voice said. “We’re going to play a game, now.”
He moaned.
She smiled at this and said, “No more pain if you follow directions precisely. Can you do that?”
He nodded quickly and added, “Yes,” breathlessly, so she wouldn’t pull on his arms again. “Anything.”
“Good.”
He took a deep breath and then she pulled on his arms again. He screamed. She let go. A single tear scrolled down his face as he panted. “I thought you said no more pain!”
“Just a reminder,” she said. “In case you feel like lying to me.”
“No lying,” he whimpered. “No lying. I won’t lie.”
“How many victims?” she asked.
“What?”
She grabbed his hands.
“Four! Four! Dammit! Don’t!”
She smiled and let go. “All women?”
“Yes.”
“How did you do it?”
He got the feeling she already knew this, but was testing him. “With a hammer.”
“Did you like it?”
“Of course.”
She nodded. “Who’s next?”
He wanted to say she was, but he would probably regret it. “Shannon Marsden.”
“Your Near Death Experience. How old were you?”
“What?”
She touched his hands. He squealed. “No! I don’t understand. What did you say?”
She kept her fingers around his hands and said slowly, closely, in his face. Her breath smelled of tic tacs. “How old were you when you had your Near Death Experience?”
What the hell did she want? What did that have to do with anything? He almost said this out loud and in his confusion thought he had, but was relieved when no pain accompanied this thought. “I was nine. My brother killed me.”
She smiled. “Even better.”
He was afraid to ask but couldn’t help it. “What do you want with me?” He waited for the pain, but it didn’t come.
“To kill Shannon Marsden.” She smiled, leaned to his face and kissed him softly. He flinched.
“You’re insane,” he whispered.
“No,” she said sitting back and looking at her nails. “I’m Elise.”
Chapter 9
Orange Park, Florida
Jake’s dream was bad. He held Beth in his arms, her face turned away from him as she mumbled nonsense. He thought at first he was at the accident scene again, but then realized he was in his wrecked lab, the emergency lighting flickering in the dark, a blood red glow emanating from the hole in the floor where the chair had been the night Qayum Omar had died and came back. The lab was destroyed.
A low rumbling started and the ground trembled beneath them. Suddenly, it shifted violently to the left and right, loose items crashing to the ground and glass shattering all around him. He looked up to see his lab assistant and best friend, Teri, walking toward him from the back of the lab. Her face was pale and her lips, bright red, as blood seeped from the gunshot wound in her chest. She bore down on them without seeming to see the gaping hole in the ground where the red light pulsed and grew brighter.
Jake shouted for her to stop, but she didn’t hear. She stared straight ahead at him and walked directly into the crater, tipping over into it and disappearing silently from view. A chorus of angry voices bellowed from within it, and he heard Teri’s voice wailing from some far off place. Tears streaked down his face and he knew she was in a desperate place, but not what that place meant.
Beth had stopped talking and he looked down upon her. She was staring up at him, tears streaming down her upturned face and she said, “The balance, Jake. Benjamin’s the key.”
He sat up in bed to find Maddy sitting up next to him, her face wet from tears as his were and a shaking hand held to her mouth. She fell into his arms and cried like a child.
Chapter 10
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Benjamin lay in the back of the van he had called home for the past three days. He was no longer bound and gagged and though he could move about the small space, he had not been allowed to leave except to use the facilities and then only accompanied by the man Elise called Bart.
He was still a prisoner, but was not subjected to any more incidents of pain or torture as long as he agreed to go along with Elise and Bart’s plans. He didn’t understand them, but he was on board for the moment. They seemed to be very intelligent and determined, though a little psycho. Especially the woman.
He was not alone in the back. Bart had somehow abducted Shannon Marsden and she lay bound and drugged on the floor. They had not allowed her to regain consciousness for more than a few minutes and had fitted her with an adult diaper which Elise changed every 8 hours or so. Benjamin had enjoyed that. Weird, but he was okay with that. He had embraced his uniqueness years ago and let it roam free. Apparently Bart and Elise had become enamored of their own differences and seemed to embrace the world from a point of view much less traveled than the rest of the world. He felt akin to them, even after the torture they had put him through.
Bart and Elise still did not trust him, because they would not let him in on the plans they had for Shannon, except to tell him they would allow him to kill her. That was cool. He had planned on doing that anyway, with or without their help.
His curiosity, though, was getting the best of him and he kept asking Bart questions, which Bart continued to ignore. He left the woman alone. She scared him.
Shannon Marsden moaned and rolled onto her back. Her eyes fluttered open and he could tell she was trying to get them to focus. She turned her head from side to side taking in her surroundings, and then she focused on his face as he smiled down upon her. She registered fear and then began to struggle.
“She’s awake, again,” he said.
Elise’s smooth, sexy voice, floated back from the front of the van. “We’re almost there. She needs to wake up.”
“Can I take the tape off of her mouth?”
“You can do to her whatever you like,” she said, turning around and smiling at him from the passenger seat. “As long as you don’t kill her, and I get to watch.”
He didn’t know what she thought he liked to do to his victims, but anything sexual was beyond him. The women he destroyed were not his type and usually he could not become aroused around them anyway. His sexual fantasies involved something completely different and he planned on keeping that to himself. Elise continued to stare at him and he finally turned away and ripped the tape from the girls face. She screamed.
“Please! Help me!” She said.
“Hello, Shannon,” he said calmly and reached for her face.
She started to sob and turned her face away from his touch.
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “It’ll be over soon enough. Bart and Elise have plans for us.”
She stared at him out of the corner of her eye, like a trapped animal, afraid to look her attacker full on. She whimpered something, but Benjamin could not understand her.
“What?” he asked, mockingly.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Benjamin Tolaver.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing, really. Well, except to kill you, but they have plans for us first. I don’t know what exactly.”
She closed her eyes and squeezed them so tight her face changed shape.
> “You need to stop that, Shannon,” he said, his voice taking on an air of authority. “You don’t want to piss her off.”
“Stop,” she said.
“What?”
“Stop!” she shouted. “Stop talking to me!”
Elise turned in her seat and stared at him with that beautiful, yet scary smile. She nodded.
He slapped her across the face, hard. It did the exact opposite of what he wanted and she started to struggle frantically, kicking and screaming.
“Stop Shannon,” he said, calmly. She kicked at him, trying to push herself away. “Shannon, Stop.”
“Don’t talk!” She shrieked. “Don’t talk! Don’t talk!”
He struck her in the face with his fist. Her pleas died instantly and she looked at the ceiling, dazed, as blood trickled from her mouth. He struck her again and again, until she lost consciousness and his knuckles bled from the blows. He had lost it, he knew, but it really didn’t matter. A hammer to her head was going to do so much more damage soon and at least he didn’t have to listen to her anymore. Elise laughed at him and then turned back to Bart, who glanced at her as he drove.
“He’s going to be perfect,” Bart said to Elise.
Benjamin smiled. He had little doubt he would disappoint them.
Chapter 11
Orange Park, Florida
The phone rang softly in Jake’s ear and then a woman answered, “Rebecca Morney’s office. How can I help you?”
“Miss Morney, please,” Jake said.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Jake Townsend, from Encephalographic Systems.”
“One moment.” Jake listened to canned music as he contemplated what he would say to the district attorney. She already believed he was a crackpot, but he hoped he could convince her to allow him another shot at Benjamin Tolaver.
After the last dream a few nights ago, he and Maddy had argued over the prospect of putting Benjamin back into the machine, but the logic prevailed (or illogic, if you looked at it from the normal everyday person’s point of view) and they both agreed it was too important to ignore. Beth and Ryan’s words in the nightmare needed to be taken seriously. Even if they were a little cryptic.
Maddy looked at him expectantly. “I’m on hold,” he said. She nodded.
“Figures,” Winslow said, absently, as she sat with them behind the console. Maddy gave her a funny look.
“Well, it does,” Winslow said. “I mean, if you do the math, she probably takes over a thousand calls a day to the office, and if you divide that by how many calls are stupid and useless, you can pretty much count on being put on hold for at least…uh…carry the two…four minutes.”
“Really,” Maddy said, giving her a withering look.
Jake chuckled. “You know,” he said. “She’s probably right.”
Winslow sipped her coffee and smiled at Maddy over the rim. “I was a statistics major.”
“Music,” Maddy said.
“You know, statistically speaking,” Winslow said, “musicians are more apt to have hemorrhoids by their thirtieth year than non-musicians. It’s something to do with musical strains.”
Maddy shook her head, but then smiled. “Somehow, I believe you, Winslow.”
Winslow turned to Jake. “How long have you been on hold, now? Three minutes?”
He nodded. “Lionel Ritchie’s Dancing on the Ceiling just ended. I’ll be…”
“Rebecca Morney.”
“Miss Morney. Jake Townsend. Thank you for taking my call.”
“Dr. Townsend. What can I do for you?” She sounded in a rush. Jake always pictured her with papers flying out of her briefcase and her hair mussed as she ran down the courthouse steps seeking some last minute injunction or witness to help her case. Melodramatic, he knew, but it was fun to visualize her that way. It made her seem less irritating. And comical.
“I’m calling to offer my services again in the Benjamin Tolaver case. I see he was released and this concerns my staff and me. If you would like to bring him back in at your convenience, we will make any and all resources available to your investigation.”
“I thought you couldn’t provide us with anything of further value, Dr. Townsend.”
“Unfortunately, I see the error in that decision, Miss Morney, and after careful consideration, we feel the risk justifies the result. We’d like to get inside his whole head, ma’am.”
“I’m sure you would. What happened to the ‘top secret’ technology? Some general have a change of heart?”
“No ma’am. We’ll just have to proceed with caution.”
“Even so, I don’t see what you could add that we could use. Besides, he’s disappeared.”
“What?”
“He was released three days ago as you know. He was last seen shopping in the grocery store and then, nothing. We can’t locate him.”
“That’s not good, Miss Morney.”
“Unfortunately, I agree with you. Anything that man would be up to is probably detrimental to some poor soul.”
“You need to find him.”
“We’re working on it.”
“Any family nearby? Old girlfriends? That sort of thing,” Jake asked.
“We know how to conduct a search, Doctor.”
“Yes. Of course. I didn’t mean to insinuate…”
“I’m curious. Why the change? Why now?”
Jake wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t expected this question and he didn’t want to make things worse by telling the truth. “We know he’s a killer and his release came as an unexpected disappointment in the justice system.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
“And we couldn’t sleep.”
She chuckled a little at that. “You seem to be mimicking my life, Doctor. I like you, though your methods are a little unorthodox. I’ll call when we find him.” She hung up without waiting for a reply.
He stared at the phone in his hands for a second and then placed it in the cradle. “He’s missing.”
“I heard,” Maddy said. “Now what?”
“We wait.”
Winslow did her best Inigo Montoya voice. “I hate waiting.”
Chapter 12
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Benjamin lay reclined in the chair with wires coming off him and a mold covering his body. Just like the lab in Florida.
“Why do you guys need a lie detector?” he asked.
He watched Elise smile and Bart chuckle. “Well, you could call The Machine a lie detector of sorts,” Bart said. “But it’s so much more.”
“What do you mean? I was already in one of these in Florida.”
“We know,” Bart said. “That place is a sham. We are not afraid to let him do what he was built for.”
“Him?”
“The Machine.”
“Townsend refers to it as a ‘she,’” Elise said.
“He would,” Bart said.
“What else does it do?” Benjamin asked.
“It reads your mind—and other things.”
“It does what? Oh shit!”
“Yes.”
“No wonder they tried to keep me so long. They could see what I had done. Shit! Shit!”
“No worries, Benjamin,” Bart said. “All that will not matter in the least in a few minutes.”
“What? Can you guys erase my memory or something?”
“Or something,” Elise said.
“Cool.”
“Yes. Very,” Bart said and turned The Machine on. “Remember what we talked about, Benjamin?”
“Yes. My NDE. Near Death Experience. You want me to relive it now?”
“Now.”
Benjamin closed his eyes and went back to it. He was surprised how easy it was to recall, even after all this time.
~ ~ ~
Bart watched Benjamin Tolaver’s NDE unfold on the screens and thought to himself, Perfect. His memory of it was flawless and the representation The Machine drew, film-like in its quality. They were
going to get what they needed.
“His music is beautiful,” Elise said. “So clean and pure. Unlike John Miller.”
“Yes. It would be wouldn’t it? Think about why.”
He watched Elise’s face as she worked it out. She was so beautiful. Sometimes he could not figure where her brutal streak came from. She hinted at a childhood that was, at the least, physically demanding, but he had yet to get any specifics out of her. She became aggravated and even violent toward him when he brought it up. He would find it out all in good time. Soon, they would all know everything there was to know about each other and no secrets were going to exist between them. He couldn’t wait for that day to come. Soon.
“He was so young,” she said. “Innocent.”
“Correct. He hadn’t been changed yet. He was still holding on to the puppies and flowers world of his childhood dreams, though that was rapidly changing. He died an innocent and when he was re-born, everything changed.”
On the screens, Benjamin floated above the scene as his brother smothered him with the pillow. The music calmed him and a bright, white light appeared over his head as visions of his life raced past him into the light. A murmuring of gentle voices called to him from within the light and he smiled, moving toward it. He glanced down at the scene below him and everything else froze. His brother cried over his still body and then pulled a pistol from his waistband, placed it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
“No!” Benjamin shouted and the beautiful music faltered just a bit. The white light flickering, as if losing power.
His mother burst into the room and saw the horror of what had happened and went to his brother, cradling his ruined body in her arms, sobbing. She rocked his brother in her arms, crying in a voice he barely recognized. His heart went to hers as his grief matched what she was feeling. Benjamin then realized he was dead.
His mother hadn’t noticed him lying on the bed under the pillow and when she finally saw him, she jumped up and went to him. Removing the pillow, she gasped at his blue face and wailed even louder.
Near Sighted (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 2) Page 5
