The Burying Place

by Brian Freeman

  But it wasn't a vision. It was real.

  Kasey peered through the snow that blew sideways across the grass, and right where the woman had been, right where she had died, was another body.

  'Oh, no.'

  She ran, slipping, toward this new victim, who lay face down and half buried by the driving snow. The body was a woman. She was naked, her skin oddly bloodless and blue, as if she had lain there for hours. Her head was turned to the side, but where her face should have been, there was mostly a pulpy mess of bone and brain.

  Kasey lurched back in revulsion. It was Regan Conrad.

  She spun around, but he was already behind her, near the wall of the dairy ten feet away, smiling.

  'I knew you'd come.'

  His voice was husky and unafraid. He wore no mask this time, and she could see his face. His right cheek was pockmarked with acne scars. His black hair was short and wiry. His dark eyes were reptilian as they focused on her, seeing her for what she was: prey. She had no illusions about why he hadn't bothered to hide his face. This was the end.

  Kasey screamed for help, but it sounded like a whisper above the hiss of the storm.

  'No one will hear you,' he said. 'It's the just the two of us out here.'

  'You sick son of a bitch,' she blustered, covering her terror.

  'This doesn’t have to end badly, Kasey. You belong with a man like me, not that beer-bellied husband of yours. Come with me.'

  'Go to hell.'

  'Think about it. Running won't get you where you want to go. But I can protect you.'

  She felt humiliated and furious. She wanted to cry and, just as badly, she wanted to destroy him. This was the man who stood between her and the rest of her life. Between her and all her plans.

  'I love watching your mind work, Kasey,' he told her. 'I told you. I know exactly who you are.'

  'What if I kill you right now?' she demanded.

  He smiled, taking a step, and his long gait brought him inches closer to her than he had been before. 'Then you'd be free, wouldn't you?'

  'Come any closer, and I'll blow your head off,' she warned him.

  'If you had a gun, I'd already be dead.'

  She took a step backward, and he took another step toward her, and again the distance between them shrank. But he was still beyond her reach. She was conscious of his size and strength. His eyes never left her. His gloved hands dangled at his sides. She kept the knife hidden in her pocket, but her fist was curled round the hilt.

  'What do you want with me? Do you want to kill me like the others?'

  'The others meant nothing to me,' he told her. 'This is something else, Kasey. I have special plans for you.'

  'What plans?'

  'You'll find out soon enough.'

  She stared into his black eyes, and her heart filled with bloodlust. There was only one thing to do. Fight. Attack. Murder.

  'Why are you doing this?' she asked. 'Who are you?'

  'My life story doesn’t matter. It only matters that I am who I am, and you are who you are.'

  She took another slow step backward, but this time she let her weight settle on to her right leg. She readied herself to charge.

  'I don't deserve to die. Not now. Not like this.'

  'Neither did Susan Krauss. Neither did any of the others. But our paths crossed. Life is random like that.' He added, 'Or maybe God sent you to me. Did you think about that?'

  'There's no God,' Kasey told him.

  She pushed off with a scream, springing across the short space. She whisked the knife through the air in front of her and imagined it slicing across his skin. Felt it burying deep through skin and bone and organs. She was so close.

  But it was futile. He was waiting for her, as if he was inside her mind and could see her thoughts. As she reached him, his hand twisted, revealing a black device barely larger than a cell phone. She was barely conscious of it, barely knew what it was, before she heard the sizzle of electricity. The knife spilled from her limp fingers. In the next millisecond, pain exploded throughout her body, savaging her nerve ends and cascading her off her feet. Her blood became fire. She twitched in the snow, in agony, her brain scrambled into floating fragments.

  He loomed above her, out of focus, doing cartwheels in her eyes. She wanted to resist, but she felt like a helpless rag doll, with useless arms and legs stuffed with sawdust. She was his toy. He owned her now. He had owned her since that night in the fog.

  She was aware of being turned over. Felt snow and dirt pushing into her mouth. Felt her hands being taped. Felt him stroke her hair and whisper in her ear: 'Bad girl.'

  He stood up, lifted her limp body into his arms, and carried her across the snowy ground.

  * * *

  PART FOUR

  IN RUINS

  * * *

  Chapter Forty-three

  Valerie heard the front door open. She hadn't moved from where she sat near the fire. Her tears had dried on her cheeks. She heard the footsteps of her husband on the floor of the foyer, and the pounding of his leather heels felt like nails driven into her palms. He didn't call her name. He walked around the house the way a ghost would, ominous and unseen. She dreaded seeing him in the flesh. It was as if, all these years, he had hidden behind a disguise, and now she had finally seen his real face.

  The footsteps stopped. When she looked up, she flinched, watching his tall frame fill the doorway. He brought a smell of cold and sweat. His suit was wrinkled, his tie loose. His angular jaw was dark with a long day's growth of beard.

  'I need a drink,' he said.

  He went to the wet bar and dropped ice into a lowball glass. He poured an inch of whiskey, drank it down in a single swallow, and gritted his teeth as the burn hit his chest. He poured more, draining the rest of the bottle.

  'You heard?' he asked. When she didn't answer, he added, 'I'm sorry.'

  He made no move to come to her or comfort her. Thank God. She couldn't bear for him to touch her. He sipped his drink and ignored the hostile silence. Her head swirled with words to say, but none of them felt right. It was like being caught outside in the rain, only to realize it was really the deluge.

  'Is that all you have to say?' she murmured. 'You're sorry?'

  'What else do you want from me? I don't have anything to give you right now.'

  That was true. He had never had anything to give. Not from the very beginning.

  'I want you to tell me what you did,' she said. 'I want to hear it from your mouth.'

  He put down his drink and shook his head. 'Ah, fuck, not you, too.'

  Valerie pushed herself off the floor. 'I always wondered how a father could hate his daughter,' she told him. 'Secretly. Deep in my heart. I never admitted it to anyone, even when I saw how you were with her. Denise used to tell me that she was scared, that I shouldn't leave Callie alone with you. I told her she was crazy, but somewhere inside, I wondered.'

  'This is crap. I never felt that way. You've been brainwashed.'

  'You're right, I have. By you. I've worn blinders for years. I wouldn't allow the thought into my brain. I willed it away. Even when Callie disappeared, I convinced myself that the rest of the world was wrong about you. Blair Rowe was wrong. Your lovers were wrong. You didn't really say what you said to them, about wishing Callie had never been born. Not you. You couldn't think that. No man could think that.'

  'Valerie, I didn't mean it like that.'

  'How did you mean it?'

  'I was angry. I was blowing off steam. That's all it was.'

  'Angry? At a little baby girl?'

  'Angry at you.'

  She tensed. 'OK. I deserve that. I cheated on you.'

  'Oh, Christ, it's not that. I'm no saint, and I never pretended to be. Hell, if Tom Sheridan could make you happy, good luck to him, because I sure as hell could never figure out how to do it. I gave you all the money you could ever want. You had a life that every woman in this town envied. But that wasn't enough. You walked around this house like you were an empty shell. O
nce a week, you spread your legs and let me inside like you were doing me some kind of favor. Get it over with, Marcus, so I can get back to feeling sorry for myself. Yeah, I was angry. I'm still angry.'

  'You could have divorced me,' she said. 'You could have found someone else. Why did you have to take your anger out on Callie?'

  'I did not do that. And I don't want a divorce.'

  'Were you waiting for me to go away?' she asked. 'Did you need a night when I wasn't in the house?'

  'You're out of control. Let me get you a sedative.'

  'Absolutely. Drug me up. That's the answer.'

  He didn't reply.

  'At least tell me it was an accident,' she whispered. 'Tell me you're not really that cold-blooded.'

  'I'm tired of accusations,' he told her bitterly as he turned for the door. 'I'm going to bed.'

  'You stand there and listen to me!' Valerie screamed.

  He froze and slowly turned back. Valerie stalked across the room. Her face was twisted in fury.

  'Did you ever love me, Marcus? God, look who I'm asking. You can't love anyone but yourself. I knew you were selfish, but I had no idea how far you'd go to keep me focused solely on you. Was that the problem? Were you jealous that Callie made me happy and you didn't?'

  'Yes, a little,' he admitted. 'But that doesn’t mean anything.'

  'Poor Marcus. His beautiful wife wasn't paying enough attention to him. She was too busy with another man's child.'

  He opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. He rubbed his chin with the tips of his fingers. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. 'Are you telling me Callie's not mine?'

  'Don't you lie to me and pretend you didn't know,' Valerie hissed. 'Don't you even dare.'

  He shrugged. 'Having doubts isn't the same as knowing. It was three years, Valerie. You were having an affair. You must have wondered too.'

  Three years.

  Valerie heard the words and felt them cut her open. He was so casual about it. Three years. As if it were a moment in time, not the hell she had suffered month by month, falling into the blackness of a hole that never ended. The hole he had dug for her. Knowingly. Deliberately. With malice aforethought.

  'Three years,' she told him, her voice raspy with grief. 'Three years, Marcus. You saw what I went through.'

  It was in his eyes. They became nervous and feral. For the first time, the thought must have entered his brain that she knew.

  'You agreed to have a child to make me happy,' she continued. 'To shut me up. To throw a bone to your poor, suffering, suicidal wife.'

  'I told you from the beginning that I didn't want children,' he said. 'You said you were OK with that.'

  Valerie shook her head. 'I really believed it back then. That was when I thought I would have a husband to live with, not a robot. But you. You sat there and agreed that we could have a baby. Did you see what it did to me? Did you see I was happy for the first time in my entire life? Was it really asking so much to make that a part of our lives?'

  'I said yes,' he told her without conviction.

  'Stop it! Stop! My God, how could you? How could you do that to me? How could you let me spend three years looking at myself like a broken machine? The one thing I had finally found to do with my life, and I thought I couldn't have it. I thought God was punishing me, Marcus. But it was you.'

  'Valerie, don't.'

  'Don't? Don't what? Don't say the word?'

  She turned on her heel and grabbed the medical form where it lay on the carpet. The form Regan had given her. 'I want to make sure I use the right word,' she told him. 'Doctors have their own words for everything. Deferentectomy. Is that it? Is that what I should call it?'

  He closed his eyes. 'Yes, that's it.'

  'See, I would have just called it a vasectomy, Marcus, but I'm not a doctor like you.' She waved the paper in his face. 'This is what you were looking for in Regan's files, isn't it? This is what you were so desperate for no one to find. Two weeks after I nearly died, Marcus. Two weeks after you said we could have a baby, you went and got a vasectomy. To make sure it didn't happen. And then you let me lie there for the next three years, hoping and praying and blaming myself and blaming God when I didn't get pregnant.'

  Her husband shook his head. 'Shit,' he murmured. He looked up at the ceiling and added, 'Regan, you fucking bitch.' 'Did you kill her? Is that how badly you wanted to keep the secret?'

  'No.'

  'Did she know all along? Did you tell her the truth about Callie?'

  'She knew,' he acknowledged.

  'God, you both must have laughed at me. Or was Regan laughing at you? You had the perfect plan, and then another man went and got me pregnant. And you couldn't say anything. You know what's ironic? I never doubted it was your baby. It didn't matter that I was sleeping with Tom. I always believed Callie was yours. I thought we would finally have something we made together.'

  'I could have divorced you then,' he said, 'but I didn't. I let you bring her into our lives. I accepted her as our own.'

  'Don't make it sound like you made the slightest effort, Marcus. Don't pretend you invested an ounce of compassion in my baby. I wish you'd told me the truth and chucked us out on the street. Instead, you took her away from me. The one thing in my life that I loved. You took her away.'

  'We're done here,' he told her, walking out of the room. 'This is over.'

  Valerie watched him go and knew he was right. It was over. The long fall ended here. There was nothing to do but wait in silence and guilt. Wait for the searchers to do their work and the forest to give up its secrets. Wait for the night to grow long.

  Wait for the phone to ring.

  * * *

  Chapter Forty-four

  Kasey awoke with the stench of death in her nose, like a fetid pool in which she was drowning. Dead flesh rotted somewhere close by, emanating a cloud of decay that hung in the air as thick as fog. She tried to breathe through her mouth, but the smell climbed into her nose and festered there. Her throat gagged. She coughed up a harsh mouthful of acid, and sour chunks bubbled out of her lips.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing. No light at all, just black darkness. She listened and heard a steady rain of water dripping and splashing into puddles from the ceiling. Animals scurried on the floor below her, their nails scratching on metal and stone. Rats. She had no idea how many.

  It was bitterly cold. There was no wind, but the freezing air pricked at her skin and made her numb. Deep inside, pain lingered in her muscles from the impact of the stun gun. Kasey tried to move and found she couldn't. Her arms were overhead, fastened with handcuffs to some kind of pipe. Where her bare wrists brushed the metal, the frost was almost hot. Her ankles were taped together, and she stood on top of a wooden platform that swayed unsteadily when she moved.

  'Where am I?' she said aloud. Her voice had a strange echoing quality in her ears. No one answered.

  She turned her head. Something heavy and rough, a length of rope, was wound around her neck. The tightness constricted her breathing, almost choking her. She struggled at the bonds that confined her, and as she did, she felt the platform under her feet rocking on uneven legs.

  His voice came out of the darkness. Shockingly loud and close.

  'Careful, Kasey.'

  She bit her lip and shut up. Fear mingled with the pain and cold. She thought about praying, but prayer was worthless.

  'Where am I?' she repeated.

  'This is my school,' he told her, still invisible, but no more than a foot away. 'It's where people come to learn the sad truth about life.'

  A light flashed in her eyes, blinding her. She squinted and closed her eyes, seeing hot orange circles in her brain. The brightness dimmed. When she opened her eyes again, the flashlight was pointed at the ceiling. She could see bits and pieces of the room around her. It was some kind of ruin, littered with rusted machinery and debris. Gaping, crumbling holes were punched in the walls. Water fell everywhere, as if the ceiling was a sieve.

&n
bsp; 'What the hell kind of place is this?'

  'A long time ago, it was a classroom. You see what happens when nature and vandals have a few decades to reclaim a building.'

  Kasey tried to look up, but the rope around her neck constrained her. She couldn't see her hands. Below her, she was barely able to see her feet, which were tied with gray tape. He had taken off her shoes and socks. She stood precariously on a five-foot circular table, and her bare, cold t—s poked over the round edge of the surface.

  He waited as she assessed her condition. He stood on top of a long oak desk, pacing slowly from one end to the other and avoiding the holes where the wood had rotted away. She tried to quash the terror in her face and focus on him with anger and contempt. When he stopped in front of her and leaned close to her face, she sucked in her breath and spat at him.

  'You're a sick fuck.' Her voice was raspy. The rope squeezing her throat made it difficult to talk.

  He wiped his cheek. 'You could teach other women something about courage, Kasey. That's why I put you behind the teacher's desk, so your students can look up to you.' With a flick of his wrist, he turned the flashlight behind him and toward the floor.

  Kasey moaned. The beam of light illuminated four bodies - three women, one man - tied into schoolroom chairs. The women were naked. They had been dead for days, and the remnants of skin had caved in on their skeletons, leaving them sunken and hideously white. Their eyes were open, staring with empty horror. Two dozen black rats, caught as they gnawed on protruding bone and decomposed flesh, scattered in fear as the light struck them.

  Kasey squirmed instinctively to escape. The table swayed underneath her.

  'That's not a good idea, Kasey.'

  He came up to her and stroked her face with the back of his hand. She cringed and tried to pull away.

  'You're handcuffed to one of the old water pipes,' he told her. 'It's corroded. Not very sturdy.' He fingered the rope on her neck. 'The noose, though, that's tied to one of the joists in the ceiling.'