Old Flames

by Jack Ketchum

  Dumb animal.

  “Are you going to stay down here a while?”

  He nodded. “I want to make sure she’s basically okay, that she doesn’t throw up inside the box or anything. I’ll hang around. But you go on ahead. I’ll give you a yell when I need you. If Sandy calls let me know.”

  “Okay.”

  She walked upstairs through the doorway that led to the dining room and kitchen and put the plates in the sink and rinsed them and stacked them in the dishwasher. Outside the window over the sink a pair of jays were harassing a small flock of sparrows attempting to feed by the cherry tree next to the garage, diving at them from the white birch on the opposite side of the lawn. Scattering them but making no real effort to feed. Just flying back to the birch and perching there until the sparrows returned and then diving back down to scatter them again. Seemingly just for the hell of it. Or maybe it was the sparrows themselves the jays were after.

  Were bluejays predatory? She didn’t know.

  Nowadays, who wasn’t?

  In the basement he thought of all the things he would do to her before she broke, all those things which would make her break in the course of time. It would take time he knew and that was fine because the good part was in the breaking. Once the will to resist had disappeared they were like herd animals, like cattle, without motivation other than to go on living with a minimum of pain. The pleasure was in the taming of the will and the mastery of the spirit and he was only in the second true hour of that, the second true hour of all that lay ahead yet already his hard-on was irresistible so he grasped it in his warm calloused hand and looked at her breathing flesh just a few feet away and stroked and stroked.

  The cat sat watching him. The cat made him uncomfortable.

  He wished it would go away.

  When he was finished he went to the sink to wash the scum off his hand and remove the smell of his body and sat down and gazed at her again.

  Screw HBO. He had his own Original Movie. Right in front of him.

  It was going to go on and on.

  FIVE

  5:25 P.M.

  “I don’t want it,” she said. “How many times do I have to tell you? Please. Just let me out of here. Why can’t you just leave the blindfold, let me get dressed and drive me back where you found me? Or anywhere. My god, I’m not going to tell anybody. How can I? I don’t even know who you are or where I am!”

  “Eat your sandwich,” he said.

  “Please. I can’t. Just the smell of it’s making me sick!”

  “When I tell you to do something you do it. I don’t care what it is. You understand?”

  “You want me to throw up? Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t care what you do as long as you do what I say and eat the sandwich. Now take a bite.”

  He held it under her nose.

  Tuna salad.

  She wasn’t lying about vomiting. She felt like a drunk at the end of a long night on sweet cheap wine. Waves of nausea rolled through her, making her sweat. It was worse than being inside the box. She shook her head side to side, trying to escape the reek of it. It was all she could do. The leather manacles were attached tight to the arms and legs of the chair. There was a rope around her shoulders and another around her waist.

  “Please!”

  She began to cry again beneath the blindfold. The blindfold her only garment now. How long and how often could you cry before it was impossible to cry anymore? Did tears have a physical limit? She hoped they did. Like her nudity the tears shamed her.

  He shoved the sandwich roughly to her closed lips. It crumbled. Cold clammy bits of bread and tuna falling across her chest and thighs. Some of it clung to her lips. She sputtered it away.

  He sighed. She heard a plate set down on a table. He walked around behind her.

  She felt the rope around her waist fall free and then the one around her shoulders. He drew them off her.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “I guess this isn’t working. I thought maybe you’d sort of get into all this. Some people do, you know.” He sighed again. “I guess we’ll just take you back like you say. You sure you won’t tell? I mean, you promise?”

  Some people get into this? Was he crazy?

  “I won’t. I swear.”

  “You remember what we look like?”

  “No. I mean, it was so fast. How could I?”

  He seemed to think about it.

  “Good. Okay. I guess we’ll do it then. Too bad though.”

  One by one the manacles fell free from the chair legs. She felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe if he was crazy, he was also crazy enough to take her out of here. Let her go. Give her up. Or even if he had something else in mind, something she didn’t even like to think about, there still might be a chance to get free. Everything, every hope, began with getting out of here. Beyond that she’d take her chances. It occurred to her that he could kill her just as easily here as anywhere. Easier in fact.

  She was healthy and strong. Anything but this she might possibly deal with.

  She felt something brush her ankle. Suddenly wet then smooth and soft. She jumped.

  “What’s that?”

  “The damn cat. Don’t worry. Hey! Outa here!”

  He released the manacles from the chair arms. She moved her wrists and jangled the rings.

  “Aren’t you going to take these off?”

  “In a minute. First I have to go upstairs and get you some clothes. I sort of ruined the ones you were wearing, you know?” He laughed. “Got to make sure you don’t try to run away on me in the meantime. Stand up.”

  He took her hand. His was hard and calloused. Not a big hand but definitely a laborer’s hand.

  “Come with me. Over here. Nice and slow. Be careful.”

  He led her blind across the room. Then he stopped her and raised her hand and snapped it to a ring on the X-frame. Suddenly she was scared again.

  “No, wait. You said…”

  “Just for a minute. While I get you some clothes.”

  He raised her other hand and attached that too so that she was facing the frame, arms spread wide above her. She heard him step away. At least her legs were free, she thought. Not like last time. For a moment there was only silence.

  She heard a whistling sound and fire climbed her shoulder.

  She jumped and screamed. The pain settled slowly into a stinging glow, a thousand tiny pinpricks along a fireline of hurt.

  “Fooled you,” he said.

  Then suddenly the blows were coming furiously, fast and hard across her back and buttocks and arms, the tender flesh of her underarms, across the backs of her legs and thighs, then even her breasts and stomach as she tried to twist away, the whip finding the same burning places over and over, uncanny, lighting them with bright new pain like lines of bee stings, like lines of biting ants, no matter how hard she tried to evade him, her wrists burning too scraped raw as she twisted inside the manacles, and whatever he was using it was bloodying her, she could feel the wetness inside the pain that was nothing whatever like the feel of sweat though she was sweating too, every muscle straining, bruising herself as she jerked and twisted against the heavy boards of the X-frame. She could hear him grunt with the exertion and her own gasps for breath, the blows crackcrackcrackcrack like pistol shots in her ears and it was like there were two of him, three of him, four of him, coming at her from everywhere at once.

  Ah ah ah ah! she heard and it was her own voice leaping startled out of her at the fall of each blow, mixed with a high whining keen and that belonged to her too though she’d never heard her voice or any voice make a sound like that. She could take no more no more and she twisted from yet another blow to her anguished shoulders and the whip found her breast again burning across it like a laser cutting deep and PLEEEEEESE! she screamed, not in protest nor even begging but a prayer to the grim gods of pain, the gods of the body’s disaster.

  He stopped. She heard him breathing behind her.

  “You’ll
get that every time you disobey. Each and every time. And worse,” he said.

  From her calves on up her body trembled from the sheer effort of standing. Somehow she found a voice.

  “Why? Why are you doing this to me? What did I do to you? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Oh. You’re innocent? Is that it?”

  “I…”

  “Let me tell you something, Sara.”

  She started at hearing her name. Almost as though he’d hit her again.

  “That’s right, I know who you are. And I didn’t just lift your name off your driver’s license either. I know plenty about you. But we’ll get to all of that later. Let me tell you something. The only innocent on God’s green earth is an infant, Sara. A baby. Some people would say an unborn baby. But I ’d extend that to, say, the first six months of life or so. In my own opinion. What’s your feeling on the subject?”

  “I…I don’t know. I…”

  “Let me ask you something. What were you going to do with your unborn child? Your baby. Your innocent?” He laughed. “I know perfectly well what you were going to do with him. You were going to let some fucking Jew doctor kill him and flush him down the toilet. Now that’s real nice. I don’t think that makes you exactly an innocent yourself, do you? I honestly don’t think so. Plus you had to do a little fancy fucking in order to get yourself knocked up in the first place, didn’t you? And I don’t see any wedding ring on your finger. So you tell me. Who’s innocent here?”

  She heard a series of snapping sounds and realized that he was taking her photo. Walking around her, getting her from various angles. She heard what sounded like him opening and closing a drawer behind her and then heard his footsteps approaching.

  “This won’t hurt,” he said.

  And then his hand was moving over her, rubbing some viscous scentless lotion over her shoulders, down across her back and waist. The relief was immediate. But he was wrong about the hurting. In a way it hurt like hell. When he got to her buttocks it hurt and when he got to her breasts. It hurt that this sick son of a bitch should be touching her in these places and that she had no say in the matter. She was learning that there were realms of hurt she’d never imagined.

  “You’re doing this because I…?”

  “I’m doing this because I can, Sara. Get that through your head. Because I can. But yes, I also have an agenda. Let me tell you how it’s going to be,” he said almost gently. “Have you ever heard of the Or ga ni za tion?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Open your legs.”

  She’d been holding them tight together. She didn’t want him touching her there. The whip hadn’t touched her there thank god so there was no reason and even if there were a reason she…

  “I said open them. Do you remember what happened to you just now? Just a couple minutes ago? You want me to turn you around maybe, try the other side?”

  She uncrossed her legs and braced herself, shivering. She felt his fingers smooth the salve over each of her upper inner thighs. His fingers coarse, the salve soothing. But the fingers went no further. They left her alone there.

  “That’s good,” he said. “You’re cooperating. I could have forced you. But that’s not what this is about. This is about you doing what I ask you to do because I ask you.”

  She felt him stand and heard him walk around in front of her.

  “I’m not going to tell you much about the Organization right now. Except to say that the Organization has a very long reach. And that you’re involved with it now, like it or not. Just like I am. I told you I know a lot about you. Well, here’s just a little part of what I know.

  “Your full name is Sara Evelyn Foster. You were born Sara Evelyn Schap in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 6th, 1955. Your parents are Charles and Evelyn Shap of 221 South Elm Street in Harrison, New York. Your mother is sixty-eight and your father’s seventy-two. You teach learning disabled kids at the Winthrop School at 115 West 77th Street in Manhattan. You’ve got a boyfriend named Gregory Glover who lives at 224 Amity Street in Rye and who dropped you off for a ten-forty-five appointment this morning with a Dr. Alfred Weller, to abort your three-month-old fetus. How am I doing?”

  Her head was swimming. How long had he been stalking her? To know this much?

  “How can you know all that?”

  “It’s not what I know personally, Sara. It’s what the Or ga ni za tion knows. And believe me, we know plenty. This is nothing but the tip of a very big iceberg. But the point is what I said before. That we’ve got reach. And we get what we want, one way or another. So don’t think you’re in this alone. You’re not. Your mother and father are in it. Glover’s in it. Your kids at the Winthrop School are in it. Along with plenty of others. This is not just your problem.

  “So it all depends on you, Sara. If you do exactly as I say you’ll not only avoid another beating like this you’ll be keeping a lot of other people you care about safe and sound and out of some very deep shit.”

  “Why? What is this about?” She was practically screaming at him. She couldn’t help it. It was crazy! She felt like a receiver on overload, could practically smell her fuses burning. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to calm down, for starters.” He sighed. “Look, I’ve got some stuff that needs taking care of. I’m going to take you down, put you in the Long Box again. You can rest.”

  How could she rest?

  “You’re not going to give me any trouble, are you? If I take you down? Remember what I said. The lives and safety of a lot of people are depending on exactly how you handle this.”

  Could all this possibly be true? Could there really be some kind of Or ga ni za tion out there waiting to pounce on her parents or Greg or the kids? Or was this some invention of his, something he’d made up just to scare her?

  All this planning, she thought. So much planned ahead of time. The coffin—what he called the Long Box. The whipping frame. That horrible confining thing he put over her head. The abduction itself, so fast and clean. They’d targeted her specifically. Could there be something to what he was saying?

  Then the woman. Who was she? Part of this Organization, whatever it was? The woman hadn’t made an appearance since the car to her knowledge.

  She remembered the quick deft plunge of the needle.

  She needed more information. A lot more. Right now it wouldn’t do any good at all to resist him.

  “I won’t give you any trouble.”

  “Good. Do you need to go to the bathroom? I can bring you down a pan.”

  “No.”

  When he’d uncuffed her and was leading her across the room she asked for some clothes but he refused. He told her she could take off the blindfold once she was inside and that he would tell her when it was okay to do that but that she’d have to keep it handy and put it on before he let her out again. She asked him for a blanket because it was cold in there and he handed her one made of light cotton, thin and soft like a baby’s blanket and she wrapped it around her against her nudity as she lay down on the sliding board and he began to push her in. And then she had to ask him one more time.

  “Please. What do you want from me? What do I have to do?” she said softly.

  “Lots of things,” he said, no harshness in his voice either. Almost as though he were somehow in league with her now.

  “You’ll see. Most of it won’t all be as bad as today. Though I have to be honest with you, some of it will probably be worse. I know how these things go. But it’s all for your own good, believe me. I’m not so bad. You’ll find that out in time. After a while everything will be fine. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have to, Sara. Honestly.”

  He slid her into the dark.

  “Why would I?” he said. “You’re pregnant. You’re going to be a mother. You’re going to have a baby.”

  He went upstairs and saw Kath on the couch with a bag of potato chips open in her lap.

  “How’s your movie?” he said.

&
nbsp; “Good. Book’s better, though. I don’t like some of the casting.”

  “I decided to go through her address book myself. I want to get back to Sandy soon as possible.”

  “Did she buy it?”

  “It got her thinking, that’s for sure.”

  He went into the bedroom and opened the closet door and took Sara’s purse off the floor in back and fished around inside for her book. He sat down on the bed. He took a note pad and pen off the nightstand, opened the book and began making notes. Half an hour later he had what he wanted. He dialed Sandy.

  “What’s up, old buddy?”

  “I’ve got some more stuff I want you to see if you can find out for me. Got a pen?”

  “Hang on a sec. Okay. Hit me.”

  “First, her parents. Can you find out what her father does for a living or if he’s retired or what? Any way to do that? Also if the mother works or did work?”

  “Sure. IRS rec ords.”

  “You can do that?”

  He laughed. “You hurt me, old buddy. Easy as getting the clinic’s files.”

  Sandy was probably one of the top two or three hackers in the State of New Jersey, had been ever since high school when he’d break into the school computer on a regular basis and rearrange grades for his friends. It was a game to him back then. Still was. But Stephen practically owed him his diploma.

  God knows what he’s hacking into now, he thought. The FBI? He decided he didn’t want to know.

  In that way they were a lot alike. Sandy never even watched the TV news. For a guy with the ability to do damn near anything computer-wise, to peer into any electronic corner, he had very little curiosity. Which made him fine for Stephen’s purposes.

  “Okay, then this Glover guy. What’s he do for a living.”

  “Already found that. He and his wife run a travel agency in Rye. The company’s online.”

  “His wife? He’s married?”

  “Her name’s Diane.”

  “They have kids?”

  “I don’t know but I can find out for you. What’s this all about, anyway? Why are you so interested in these fucking people? Playing amateur detective?”