The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare

by David Beers

  10

  It had taken Matthew three years to make this drive.

  Three years ago Matthew began putting out feelers, searching for what he thought might be the best way to quietly amass the number of people he would need. He thought about the homeless, that had been his first thought actually—but it was too risky. People looked for the homeless, even if they looked less than for almost any other demographic. They still looked. If twenty people came up missing in New York City, twenty people that had inhabited the same spot for years, the FBI might hear about it. Too risky. He couldn’t have risk now. Risk had gotten him to this point. Risk had gotten his son killed again and his wife killed for the first time. Risk, and Matthew’s own damnable pride, had put him in this position and he wouldn’t allow those two things to rise again.

  So he thought and he searched for six months. He came to a conclusion right before he showed up and gave Dillan what was owed him.

  There was one group that people didn’t look for at all. One group that even parents, if they were around, would disown.

  Prostitutes.

  They were the scourge of society. The women that threw away one of the most sacred of civilization’s morals: that women shouldn’t sleep around. More, they shouldn’t be paid to sleep around. Parents raised children, especially girls, with that specifically in mind. Keep your legs closed until you find a man who loves you. So the ones that opened their legs for a few dollars, oh, Lord, they couldn’t be forgiven.

  Matthew’s thought process didn’t end there though. He couldn’t start pulling call-girls off the street; their absence would be recognized perhaps quicker than the homeless. What he needed was the sex trade. He needed people that were so lost, so drugged up, so completely forgotten that they could barely remember their own names, let alone someone writing it down in a police precinct somewhere.

  Today, three years later, with four bodies hanging in his lighthouse, Matthew arrived at one of the three men who ran the sex trade in North America. He parked his van outside of a building, the parking lot full of cars, and a sign at the top of the building, which said StraightAire—a business name that Matthew had found out wasn’t just a front. They had legitimate revenues and the cars here weren’t just for show. People worked inside the building, even if it was conveniently set off from the main highway by about five hundred feet of road and a security guard. Matthew didn’t ask questions when he was told to arrive though, didn’t ask how they were going to get the people he needed into his van and didn’t ask what the people working at StraightAire would think if they happened to witness someone dressed in rags being shoveled into a van.

  He only showed up, because this was a business you didn’t ask questions in, and this was his first time meeting any of these people in person. Plus, he was already going to ask something outrageous, and he needed to save whatever small amount of political capital he might have. When he first came up with this plan, low risk was all-important. Time was not a factor because as long as he gathered the people he needed, he could dim the sun at any time. That theory had changed this past week, had changed drastically when Matthew woke up with blood covering much of his kitchen table and a distinct memory of having being shoved by a black woman who no longer existed. Something was taking place in his mind, and he didn’t know what the end result would be. He couldn’t control it. Matthew had only felt that way once before, felt that he had no control over his life when he watched those four cops go to trial for Hilman’s murder. He sat in the courtroom every day, right next to Rally, holding her hand, and listening as they lied repeatedly.

  He was behaving aggressively.

  He was cursing.

  He was using racial epithets and making threats.

  It had gone on and on, and the prosecutor seemed to care, but seemed to be fighting a machine that would just as soon eat him as let him live. Matthew felt helpless the day they read the verdict of not-guilty. He felt like a newborn, with strange light filling up his vision, now in a new world that he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t feel that way again, though, not until now.

  This week, when he woke up from that daydream, he felt comparable to the way he had in the courtroom. Not as deeply, but a vague similarity that this was something outside of his sphere of influence. So what could he influence? The speed at which he operated. Or at least, he could try to, which is what he wanted to ask these people today. Would it be possible to turn the assembly line’s pace up just a bit?

  Matthew stepped outside of the van and closed the door. He walked to the hood, just as he had been instructed to, and placed a cigarette in his mouth, just as he had been instructed to. He lit it and smoked. He tried smoking in college but this was the first one he had lit since then. It felt, strangely, good. He blew the smoke out into the sky and took another puff. He was told to wait here until someone came for him. Matthew didn’t think that someone would be a law enforcement agent; he had done as much investigating as humanly possible on the people he was dealing with, as surely they had him. Maybe they knew who he really was, or maybe they believed the spurious life he had created and allowed to circulate through the various regulatory agencies. He’d even popped in some contacts to cover up the blue of his eyes, making them the more natural brown of African-Americans. Either way, he was here, and you didn’t get here unless they thought you were serious. No one arrived to this business and ended up dead right away. You got here because you had money to give and they had people to sell.

  The door to StraightAire opened up and a man walked outside. He had a blazer on, a button down shirt with the top two buttons left unbuttoned. No tie. He walked across the parking lot, his eyes looking more at the ground than anything else, certainly not sweeping the lot.

  “Jamal?” The man asked as he arrived.

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Bolden?”

  “That would be me. How was the drive?”

  “Not bad at all. Eighteen hours is never good, but it wasn’t bad either,” Matthew said.

  “Good, good. The drives can really be the worst sometimes. If you need a pick-me-up for the drive home, let me know and we can probably find you something.”

  “I should be okay, but I appreciate it.”

  The man nodded. “Alright, let’s get to it.” He turned and started walking back across the parking lot. Matthew dropped the cigarette and followed.

  They went through the building, winding upwards, taking the stairs each time, and covering each floor. The floors were full of people in cubicles, apparently working, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. And, really, nothing abnormal was happening yet, but why was Matthew being led upstairs? Upstairs meant they had to come back down, and back down meant they had to travel in front of all these people again. Matthew kept his mouth shut until they reached the top floor, where they walked all the way to the end and met what appeared to be a closet.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Bolden said.

  He didn’t put a key into the doorknob, but simply turned it, and opened the door. The room was dark, but as he flipped a switch, the ceiling rained down light. They both stepped in, and Mr. Bolden closed the door behind them, though anyone could have looked in to see what this room held.

  The Room of Illegitimacy, Matthew thought.

  Four people were attached against a wall. Their legs tied to pipes that ran around the base, and their arms to pipes that ran at about waist level. Two sets of pipes, four people attached to them with zip-ties.

  Matthew turned around to look at Bolden. “Those people out there, the one’s you just paraded me through, they know?”

  “Of course. They’re paid their usual salary, and then they receive a bonus once a year just like any other corporation. Their bonus is tied to their performance and tied to their knowledge of this room.”

  “And if someone leaves the company?” Matthew asked.

  “Once you work for StraightAire, you receive your bonus for the rest of your life. If at any time you feel the bonus isn’t enough, then an unfortu
nate accident may occur. Trust me, Jamal, we vetted you, we vetted these people, too. You can guess why I walked you through the way I did rather than simply taking an elevator.”

  “It’s a smooth operation,” Matthew said, before turning around to look at his purchases. All four were Asians. One boy, three women. The boy was just that, a boy. He might have been fourteen, probably having started puberty, but not very far into it. The three women were young, eighteen tops. One had a bruised eye and Matthew walked over to her. He had to look down just a bit so that he could see her face. She didn’t look up.

  Matthew saw nothing in those black, slightly slanted eyes. A blankness comparable to what he had seen in Marley Moore.

  “Sometimes accidents happen, but it’s only a bruise. It will heal in a day or so,” Bolden said from behind him. Matthew realized Bolden thought he was looking at the girl like he was checking inventory. Matthew was looking because he had never seen a sex slave before. He was looking because he wanted to try and understand perhaps a sliver of what these people went through. Not out of compassion, but out of that singular curiosity that drove him so far in life. The curiosity to ask why. To continually ask why. There weren’t any answers in the girl’s eyes though. No answers to her past or her current mind.

  “There’s a problem,” Matthew said, still staring at the girl.

  “And what’s that?”

  “These aren’t enough.”

  Matthew turned around and saw that Mr. Bolden held a gun, as if it had dropped from the ceiling and landed in his hand with the silence of a butterfly.

  “I don’t like problems, Jamal.”

  “Neither do I, but you don’t need that gun to solve this one. I need more people is all. I’ll pay. I’ll pay a premium above what I’m already paying because I realize it’s going to put more pressure on your operation.” Matthew’s hands hung at his sides, the rest of him not moving at all.

  Bolden’s gun faced the floor, but Matthew saw his finger wrapped around the trigger. “This is my first time meeting you. We had a deal. Four people for a certain amount of money. We have your money, you have your people, but you show up now and say that you want to change the deal. You’re saying that you want more. How many more, Jamal?”

  “As many as you can get at once. Twenty, maybe.”

  “You want twenty people at once, as opposed to the four we agreed on. How do you think that looks to me?”

  Matthew said nothing.

  “It looks suspicious, like maybe you’re wanting me to find more people because you’re wanting to build a stronger case against me. Like maybe a life sentence wouldn’t be enough for you and your friends.”

  Matthew laughed loud and heavy. “I see. I see. I’m going to turn around here, if you don’t mind, and look back at the merchandise for a second. Try not to let the gun fire into my back if you can.” He turned and stepped closer to the girl. “Mr. Bolden, I can promise, I’m not interested in either a life sentence or a death sentence for you.”

  In an instant, Matthew brought a blade from his pocket and opened the girl’s throat. He stepped back quickly to avoid being splashed too much, and her life flooded to the floor. He hadn’t escaped all of it though, some having sprayed immediately onto his white shirt and face. He didn’t move to wipe any of it off.

  He turned around and looked at the man holding the gun. Turning his palms towards Bolden, the blade still in his right hand, the girl hanging limply behind him, Matthew said, “I’m not too interested in getting the authorities involved at all.”

  Art heard his phone ringing and turned on his side to look at it. He was in his office, lying on a couch against the wall. Jake was outside, sleeping on the floor with his undershirt as a pillow. Both men had flights so early in the morning it would make a dairy farmer embarrassed at the time he woke up, so the two decided to stay here, work until they couldn’t any longer, and then leave from the office. Art’s phone said it was two in the morning and they would be waking up in the next thirty minutes anyway. He picked the phone up, still ringing with an unknown number, and put it to his ear.

  “Hello,” he said and then cleared his throat.

  “Art! Matthew! Did I catch you sleeping?”

  The voice sounded entirely too happy to be up this early. Art thought, haphazardly, but thought nonetheless, about what they had done with his phone. He told IT the last time Brand called and they put a tracer on it, so Art didn’t need to worry about that.

  “Was just waking. How can I help you?” Art said, sitting up on the couch.

  “Just calling to check in. Got some really good news today from one of my partners, wanted to see how things were going on your end. Splendidly, I hope?”

  Art leaned forward to look out his office door, and saw Jake sprawled on his stomach, the t-shirt forgotten to the right of his head.

  “If sleeping in my office is splendid, then yes, you would be correct. What the fuck are you calling me for?”

  “Art, you do realize I’m going to be like the closest person you have in this world over the next couple of months, right? That you’re going to die knowing me better than you know perhaps anyone else. You don’t have a wife. You see your kids and grandkids twice a year. You have your job and I think you have a little sidekick now, but that’s it. No one else. So why are you upset that I’m calling you?”

  Art stood up, stretched one arm above his head, and looked for his computer bag. “You like having a bigger dick now that you’re black?” He walked across the room for the bag, and threw a laptop inside it. He would need to wake up Jake in a few minutes.

  “To be honest, haven’t been able to use it very much. Maybe someday soon though. This Arthur Morgant character, he’s tougher than I imagined. Might have decided to dive into the other guy at The Wall had I known all the baggage this one would bring.”

  Art stopped packing.

  Use it soon? “Morgant was a rapist,” Art said.

  “Yeah, I know.” Brand sighed. “It seems that all of those tendencies cannot be simply shoved aside forever. Don’t worry though, I haven’t resorted to his more base ways yet. I’m still fighting the good fight, you know?”

  Art laughed quietly into the phone. “You’re a sick fuck. You’re going to end all life on the world and become a rapist at the same time, in the last year of your life. That’s what all your genius has led you to.”

  “Come on, don’t say it like that. It sounds so, I don’t know, depressing. I’ll give it to you though, I’m certainly not peaking in my late age, which is why my partner’s agreement today is really such good news. I don’t want this to be my Canterbury Tales, you know?”

  “Agreed. I’d hate for you to die in some hole or get caught raping some woman at a Seven-Eleven. That would take away a lot of the pleasure I plan on having at your next death. The Wall’s no more. The whole program scrapped. There’s nowhere else for that big brain of yours to hide after we put a few holes through it.”

  Matthew laughed then. “Are God fearing men supposed to be filled with so much hate?”

  “Probably not, but God made confession for a reason.”

  “That he did. Maybe that’s what you are to me, Art. Maybe you’re my confession over the next few months.”

  Art took his phone away from his face and looked at it, letting the silence stretch between the two of them. Art was going to act as a priest to this man, was going to listen to his sins, was going to try and help absolve him? He put the phone back to his ear. “I’m not sure you understand what confession is.”

  “I’m not asking for absolution. I’m not asking for anything, but you will get these calls, Art. You will get them, and protocol is going to determine that you have to listen to them, because I might drop a hint of what’s going on, of a way that you can stop me.” Matthew paused for a few seconds. “Haven’t been able to find anything on me yet, huh?”

  They were flying to Massachusetts this morning, a team had already been assembled including police forces. They were hitting
every industrial park in the state. It might not be the best path, but where else could they start? He was in the state of Mass, that much was clear, and last time he had used the industrial park. So with warrants from every needed judge, they were going to make sure he wasn’t doing it again. That was it though. The homeless situation wasn’t panning out. Any and all missing persons reported were to be immediately entered into the FBI database, to which analysts were pouring over the data as it came in from across the country. So far, nothing substantial had come back.

  “My boss, he doesn’t believe you can do it.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. You lost your mind a long time ago, Brand. Your best work was done before that. Even the technology that allowed you to bring your son back, that was done twenty years ago. You’ve done nothing since then that would even hint at you having this kind of power anymore.”

  “Besides create an exact replica of my mind and insert it over someone else’s?”

  “Which, apparently, is breaking down on you right now.” Art looked up to see Jake at the door. He took the phone away, hit the speaker button, and laid it on the desk.

  “Has Jake joined us? Is that why I hear a slight echo?” Matthew asked.

  “We’re both here, but we’re going to have to cut this short pretty soon. Gotta catch a flight to come to where you are. Anything you want to say to us before we get off?”