Black Angel

by Graham Masterton

  He grasped Joe’s right hand, and forced it flat on to the floorboards.

  “No,” said Joe, dully, although there was nothing he could do.

  The man kept Joe’s hand flat against the floor with his knuckles. Then, with a jingle, he sorted another nail out of his sack, and dug it directly into the back of Joe’s hand.

  “No,” said Joe. But with three or four hard, insistent bangs, his right hand was nailed to the floor, too.

  Joe cried, “Ah! Ah! Oh God, ah! Oh God, that hurts!”

  But the man said coarsely, “Shut up, please, will you? This is all going good. We don’t want to spoil it, do we?”

  “Jesus,” wept Joe.

  He kept his head bowed and his brain closed while the man nailed Nina’s right hand to the floor. But the sound of the hammer struck through every bone and nerve in his body.

  The man stood up, and paced around them. “Good, Joe, you’re looking good. That’s the way I like to see you, don’t you know? Kneeling down, showing the proper respect.”

  Eventually, he hunkered down behind Joe, and said. “This is going to hurt. But I want you to think about something that takes your mind off things that hurt. I don’t know, think about your mother. Your dear sweet little old mother.”

  Joe’s hands, cold at first, now felt as if they were blazing. He hung his head in pain and exhaustion.

  “You don’t want to think about your dear sweet little old mother?” the man chided him. “You bastard! What kind of an American are you? Next thing you’ll be telling me you don’t like Pee Wee Herman!”

  He spent some time rummaging in his sack. Then he produced a nine-inch rail dog and held it too close to Joe’s face, so that all Joe could see was blurry black-and-blue. “Look at that! Is that a nail or is that a nail? That’s hand-forged. No expense spared on you, Joe.”

  He pressed the point of the rail dog into the soft hollow just in back of Joe’s knee. Joe thought: holy shit, he’s going to nail my legs to the floor, too. He hesitated for a moment, while the man picked up the hammer. Then he lashed out with both legs, like a donkey. His right foot caught the man on the elbow, and the man rolled over, unbalanced. But the next thing Joe knew, the butcher knife came slicing right up between Joe’s legs, cutting through his pants, opening up his scrotum, and digging halfway into his penis. Missing his urtery by an eighth-of-an-inch.

  Joe stayed motionless, crouched, hunched, with blood soaking his pants. Oh God. One more inch and he could have turned me into a woman.

  “That’s good, Joe,” the man told him. “You just stay still like that; don’t move; and everything’s going to be fine and dandy.”

  Another kind of crucifixion followed. The pain was so terrible that Joe openly cried. The man drove nails right through his bended knee-joints into the floorboards, so that he was fixed into place, on all fours. Then he did the same to Nina.

  When he had finished, he tossed the hammer aside, and it bounced and bounded across the floor.

  “There, Joe! There, Nina! Crouching like servants! Crouching like slaves! I like you like that, Joe! That’s the way you were born, crouching. That’s the way you lived your life! It suits you to crouch! Servile, yes? That’s it, servile!”

  He walked around and around them, so that Joe lost touch of where he was. But at last he stopped, right behind Nina, and hesitated, one booted foot drumming quickly on the floor. Oh dear God. the pain, thought Joe. But he was past weeping; at least for now.

  “Servants, yes!” the man decided. “That’s what you are, servants!”

  He slowly knelt down, flexing his chest-muscles as he did so, jangling the beads that dangled from his nipples. He lifted Nina’s flowery green-and-yellow dress, all the way up to her waist, until her bottom was exposed. She wore shiny tan-colored pantyhose, with white lace-trimmed panties. The man trailed his fingertips around the cheeks of her bottom, gently, musingly, but confidently too, because he knew that whatever he wanted to do, neither Nina nor Joe would be able to stop him.

  “I’m going to fall,” whispered Nina. “I can’t stand it any longer. I’m going to fall.”

  “You couldn’t fall if you wanted to,” the man cooed. “You’re nailed in place, Mrs. Berry. Fixed in slavery. Fixed, you housetrained bitch!”

  “Leave her alone!” Joe bellowed. “You touch her, so help me, I’ll see you in hell!”

  The man raised his black masked face. The lamplight shone on every glossy curve. Only the eyes remained dead. “That, Joe, has been on the cards since you were.”

  With finger and thumb, the man fastidiously rolled down Nina’s panythose, down to her bloodied knees. He couldn’t pull them down any further because she was firmly nailed to the floor. Then he tugged down her panties, a little at a time.

  Jesus so help me if we ever get out of this I’m going to strangle this man with my bare hands and happily die for it.

  Joe closed his eyes. He heard the man’s belt buckle unlatching. He heard Nina whimper. Please Jesus spare me this. Please don’t let this be happening. Please may I now wake up.

  He caught a blurred glimpse of the man with his leather pants pulled down to his thighs. Black shaggy hair, white shaggy thighs, and a rearing red totem. Then all he could do was concentrate on Nina’s face, in agonizing close-up, as the man reared up behind her, and dragged the cheeks of her bottom apart, and forced himself into her.

  She winced in agony, although by now she was almost beyond agony. Her green-flecked irises contracted. Her mouth opened, as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “I love you,” Joe told her. There was nothing else that he could do. He wished now with an agony that made the pain in his hands and his knees seem like kisses by comparison that he had struggled and fought for her. Even if the man had stabbed him to death, he could at least have died like a man—died like his partners had died, when he was a cop—out on the streets, fighting injustice, fighting for something they believed in.

  But Joe—no, Joe was nailed to the floor, while a brutal sadist raped and tortured his wife, right in front of him. The great tough husband and protector Joe Berry was nailed to the goddamned floor!

  Perspiration quivered on Nina’s forehead like a crown of pearls. The man thrust harder and harder, and she was starting to pant.

  “She’s a good hump, Joe!” the man grunted. “She might have given you two kids, Joe—but no problem, she’s still as tight as a nut!”

  Joe saw Nina’s face with her eyes tight shut and her teeth gritted. Then all of a sudden the man shouted, “Oh! That’s it! That’s fucking it!” and Nina cried out, and the worm-spaghetti wouldn’t stay down in Joe’s stomach. It filled up his mouth with a huge hot rush which he couldn’t contain, and splattered over his hands.

  The man stopped his jerking and thrusting.

  “Oh, come on, Joe. That’s not nice. We’re just trying to have a little fun here. That’s not nice.”

  “You’re killing me!” Nina screamed. “It hurts so much! I can’t stand it any longer!”

  The man hesitated, then sat back on his haunches and tugged up his pants, and buckled himself up. “I see,” he said, and although his voice was soft, it was filled with a terrible cold resentment which made Joe feel even more frightened than before. “I see, so that’s the way you feel about it.”

  Joe heaved again. A string of scarlet saliva swung from his chin.

  “Can’t you leave us?” Nina begged. “Can’t you see that we’ve had enough?”

  “Enough?” the man repeated, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean, enough? This is the sixth ritual of the seven rituals. Don’t you understand?”

  The sixth ritual, thought Joe, lowering his head. Now, at last, he understood who their attacker was, and it filled him with such fear that he could have screamed, and gone on screaming. Every month this year, a family had been butchered somewhere in the Bay Area… Forest Hill, Crocker Amazon, Pacific Heights, Bernal Heights, College Park. The murders had been deliberate and ritualisti
c, and in most cases the victims had been killed so horribly and in such bizarre ways that the TV and newspapers had withheld most of the details.

  How do you report that a man was forced to push his own hand down a sink-disposal unit, in order to save his wife from being set on fire?

  The murderer had left scarcely any circumstantial evidence; but he had called KGO Radio after every killing and claimed responsibility. Joe had heard his tape-recorded voice on television, blurting, “Every one of these sacrifices has brought the great day closer. Soon my master will rise again, as it was written in the scrolls.”

  Joe couldn’t remember if the voice was anything like the voice of this maniac who had nailed them to the floor. He hurt too much to think with any kind of clarity.

  KGO had dubbed the killer the Fog City Satan. His killings had followed no particular pattern; except that they had all been ritualistic, and that nobody had survived to tell the police what had happened; not even a child. When the Fog City Satan visited your home, that was the end of you and all of your kind.

  There had been no discernible logic behind the Fog City Satan’s choice of victims. One had been white-collar, two had been blue. One family were Mexicans, another were Chinese. Two had been Catholic, three had been connected with the hotel or catering business. None had been gay. None had served in the armed forces. Two had owned Pontiacs. One had owned a Volkswagen.

  Either the Fog City Satan chose his victims at random; or else he was following some obscure personal vendetta which nobody else could explain. Once, Joe had arrested a man who had been shooting anybody whose name began with a G and ended with an D—“in case they got uppity ideas and tried to claim that they were God.”

  The brutality of what happened on the streets had eventually led Joe to hand in his shield. It was almost too much for him to accept that he and his family had fallen victim to the madness that he should have stayed on to fight.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do now?” the man whispered. “I’m going to bring in your children, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to rouse them up from their beddy-byes, and I’m going to bring them in here to see you; and they’re going to say goodnight. In fact, they’re going to say more than goodnight, they’re going to say goodbye.”

  Joe roared, “If you so much as touch one hair on their heads—!”

  The mask dipped closer; black and shiny; its eyes dead. “You’ll what, Joe? What will you do? Rip half the muscle out of your leg, and crawl after me? Or maybe you’ll curse me, Joe—maybe that’s what you’ll do! Well—curse away, that’s all I can say! Because there’s no curse worse than me.”

  Joe swallowed, and spat out fragments of ground beef. Then he said, “Listen, if you need a sacrifice, I’ll be your sacrifice. But don’t touch the children, please. Just let them sleep.”

  He coughed, and then he said, “You can kill me now. Go on. You can kill me now. But please don’t touch those children, please.”

  The man listened thoughtfully. He turned away. It seemed as if time had come to a premature end; as if logic had melted like one of Salvador Dali’s buttery pocket-watches, draped over a branch.

  “You know something?” the man said at last. “You just don’t get it, do you? Fate, destiny, call it what you like. You just don’t see where it’s going. You don’t see what’s happening, all around you. The old order’s coming back. Not those fusty old farts from pioneer times. The real old order. Pure evil, Joe. Pure and cold! They’ve waited and they’ve waited; but now’s the time! The time that was told of. And there’s nothing you can do to hold it back.”

  Joe said, “Don’t touch our children, okay?”

  The man waited, tapping the tip of his knifeblade against his teeth. Then he said, “Give me a minute, will you?” and walked quickly out through the living-room door.

  “Don’t touch our children!” Joe roared.

  There was a lengthy silence. Nina began to cry.

  “It’s okay,” Joe told her. His throat was sore with vomity-tasting phlegm. “Everything’s going to work out fine. He’s a headcase, that’s all. He just wants to make us feel scared.”

  “I’m so scared! I’m so scared! What more does he want?” blurted Nina.

  “Just hold on, please,” Joe begged her. He felt as treacherous as a lizard; as stupid as a clown. Worst of all, he had allowed the most vicious and irrational killer that the Bay Area had ever known to break into his house and terrorize his family. And he had allowed himself to be rendered totally helpless, so that if the killer wanted to torture and sacrifice his children, there was nothing he could do to stop him.

  “Joe,” Nina panted. “Joe.”

  Joe rocked his hands, just a fraction, from side to side. Each movement was critically painful, and fresh blood bulged out around the nailheads, and slid warmly down between his fingers, so that his hands were soon paddling in it.

  Left, right. Left, right. Jesus, I never knew anything could hurt so much.

  “I’m working myself free,” he told her. “Don’t you worry, Nina. It hasn’t gone through bone. I’m working myself free.”

  Inside, he wept. Inside, he felt as tiny as a child.

  Nina whispered, “Joe, listen, don’t. You’ll hurt yourself. Joe, listen, if this family has to die then we’ll all die together. Joe, don’t try to fight him.”

  “He raped you!” Joe screamed. “He raped you!”

  And he used that anger to shout out, “hah!” and to tear his right hand free from the floorboards, with a hideous crackling sound, leaving a string of scarlet muscle clinging to the nail, and his hand spraying blood in every direction. He sucked in his breath in a sharp “theeeeeee!” of agony, and pressed his hand close to his chest. The pain was worse than anything he had ever experienced. And it was even worse because he knew that would never have the courage to pull his other hand free from the floor, because it hurt too much, because he didn’t have the balls. And there wasn’t a chance in the world that he could possibly tear out the nails that were buried in his knees. He would rather stay crouched on the floor than try to pull those out.

  This is the point when pain overcomes bravery—when you have to admit that you simply cannot take any more.

  “Joe,” Nina whispered. “Joe?”

  He raised his head. “What is it?”

  “I just want you to know that whatever happens, I still love you, and you’re not to blame.”

  He wiped his torn hand against his face, and streaked his cheek with blood. He started to sob. Deep, braying sobs, like an animal in pain. He sobbed and sobbed, and he thought that he would never be able to stop.

  Not until the man appeared in the living-room doorway, leading Caroline with one hand, and Joe Junior by the other. Both children were pasty-faced and swollen-eyed and staring with terror. Joe immediately damped his hand back to the floor, as if it were still nailed down.

  “Mommy?” whispered Caroline. “Daddy?”

  The man squeezed her wrist. “Come on now, kids. You promised you’d be quiet, now didn’t you? So just stay quiet.”

  Joe said hoarsely, “It’s all right, kids. It’ll soon be over. Just do what he tells you, and everything’s going to work out fine.”

  The man let out a muffled laugh. “You’re some kind of optimist, Joe, I’ll say that for you!”

  “Just don’t hurt them, all right?” Joe insisted.

  “The great one requires pain,” the man replied. “Pain and humiliation, and a prayer of forgiveness.”

  “If you so much as scratch those children, you’re going to burn in hell, I promise you. You think the police department wouldn’t hunt you down and make absolutely sure that you die the most painful death they can think of?”

  The man laughed again. “Even Satan’s entitled to a trial.”

  “You’ll burn in hell for this!” Joe yelled at him. “You’ll burn in hell!”

  Joe Junior started a high-pitched terrified crying, almost like a whistle, and tried to twist himself away from
the man’s grip. But the man swung him around and growled, “Shut up, you little bug!”

  He dragged both children across to the couch. Joe turned his head away. He didn’t think that he could bear to watch. But Nina, trembling, couldn’t take her eyes off them; and all the time she muttered under her breath “Don’t hurt my children, dear God don’t hurt my children, dear God don’t hurt my children.”

  The man dragged a length of thin nylon yachting cord out of his sack, and deftly lashed Caroline’s left wrist to Joe Junior’s right wrist. Neither of the children was crying now, but they whimpered and shivered so pitifully that Joe decided that however much it was going to hurt him, he was going to try to tear himself free from the floor.

  Up, Joe! he told himself. You have to get up.

  He clenched his teeth, and reached behind him, gripping his ankle with his bloodslippery hand, so that he could lever his leg upwards, and drag the nail out of his right knee. One—two—three—

  He screamed, but he didn’t hear himself scream. The pain put him into convulsive muscular spasm, and he ground his teeth so forcefully that he crushed one of his ceramic crowns. He still couldn’t get up. He couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it. The nail had been driven too deeply into the floorboards, and he didn’t have the strength or the will to have another try at tugging it out.

  “Are you all right?” the man asked him, with creepy solicitousness.

  A strange quietness came over the Berry family, all four of them. The quietness of complete terror. The quietness of looking death, real death, straight in its dark and velvet eye.

  The man ushered the children against the wall. Then he took hold of Caroline’s right arm, and lifted it high above her head Joe saw the hammer and the nails coming out, and screamed, “No!”

  Why didn’t the children cry? It must have hurt them just as much as it had hurt Nina and him. Yet they were uncannily silent, and their silence was far more agonizing to Joe than their screaming would have been. It was as if they prepared to endure anything, because they trusted their father to save them. Daddy wouldn’t let us die.