by R. D. Cain
Lindsay crawled over to the others. The new woman was called Tara Hopkins. She was sharing a blanket with the boy, Taylor Burke. He seemed the most comfortable with her, was practically wrapped around her. Blond with dark eyes and no sign of facial hair, he said he was eighteen but acted younger, especially after what had been happening to him. Lindsay figured that he felt emasculated after the rapes. The Warden did it right in front of all of them so they had to see. It was disgusting — the gagging and the puking. Taylor’s screaming was usually drowned out by the loud music. Loud music like what had just started playing.
Hopkins had her arms around Taylor like a protective mother. Lindsay was cuddled up alone and hoped she was wrong about what was about to happen.
Hopkins said loudly, “Is today another day?”
Lindsay had no idea. She was always hungry, so that was no guide. The Warden had gone off his circadian rhythm as far as she could tell. Without a watch, she couldn’t even be sure of the month anymore.
Hopkins shouted in her ear. “Because if it is, my friends will be looking for me by now.” Lindsay was barely paying attention. She didn’t give a shit if Hopkins’ friends were looking — she had bigger problems. If it was another day, then she was one day closer to her own thirty-day mark. And when the Warden played with the girls, he played for keeps. Hopkins was holding it together, trying to be strong for the boy. However, she hadn’t watched him murder two people, then carve up their bodies. She might not be so tough after that.
Lindsay shook her head from side to side. “Your friends aren’t going to find us. Don’t you get it? We’re going to die down here.” Lindsay had been through it in her mind. Death was inevitable.
The song changed to “Mama” by Genesis. The reverb effect on the drums pounded through the floor, followed by the creepy, sad keyboards and then the singer, trying to speak softly but unable to contain the violence running though his mind. When the hatch flung up and back and the red flashing light shone down, Lindsay made a mental note of the exact moment in the music when all hell broke loose.
The Warden dropped the ladder into the room, then peeked down headfirst. He was wearing makeup on his face. There were black circles around his eyes and mouth, white powder over his face and red symbols on his cheeks. No, not symbols; they were poorly drawn birds. He tossed down a small black duffle bag that seemed to turn purple when the red light flashed on it. She knew what was in it. This was not the first time he had slunk down the ladder with such exaggerated movements, like he was on drugs and thought he was in a slow-motion martial arts movie. His arms stretched out, hands wide open. He was naked.
Lindsay was disgusted, but she couldn’t look away from the performance. Olive skin was bathed in red light, his back, glistening with sweat, looked blood-soaked, and tufts of back hair stood out black like necrosis, as if his skin were dead and peeling away — a new, evil form of life being born in front of their eyes. His member hung heavy and thick with blood. With his lean, tight muscles, he was the worst that evolution could offer: a machine of flesh built to hunt and rape.
He jumped the last step to the ground and crouched low. The music pounded, the singer screaming, “Mama, Mama.” He reached a hand out to the corner of the huddled captives, then made a “come to me” motion by slowly pulling back his index finger while staring at Taylor.
Taylor might have been screaming, but there was no way to tell with the music so loud. When Taylor didn’t move, the Warden turned back to the duffle bag and slowly opened it up like he was removing the autopsy twine from a corpse’s chest. He reached into the open cavity and withdrew a length of leather, thin like a shoelace, long like a nightmare.
He set the lace aside and withdrew several pairs of handcuffs. With his back to the captives, he stole a glance over his shoulder. Lindsay assumed he was smiling. He stood up tall, facing them. He was hard and ready for it. He came over, more determined. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He started by grabbing Hopkins away from Taylor and forcing her to the ground. She said something to him — it might have been “No, he’s just a boy” — and his only reply was a slap across her face that knocked her back.
While she tried to recover from the strike, he handcuffed her arms behind her back. When he cuffed Lindsay, he slowly licked up the side of her face, giggling when she recoiled and cried out in revulsion. He saved Taylor for last, she noted, just like last time.
They were forced to watch. He approached Taylor, again moving like he was in some performance art piece — like he was high on cocktail of rave drugs, E, Viagra, meth or acid. Taylor did nothing. Lindsay knew what was going through his mind. He was disappearing into subspace. He was praying for someone or something to make him not exist while it was happening, begging for death to take him. When your existence is shame, self-hatred, torture and horror, praying for death becomes all-consuming. She knew this first-hand.
Chavez grabbed Taylor by the back of his neck, and with a hammer fist pounded his back, like he was trying to smash him in two. Taylor didn’t resist; last time it had only made things worse. Tears were pouring down his face, thick snot hung from his nose. He slowly began to crawl to the middle of the room, where the Warden had taken him last time.
The soundtrack changed to “Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode. A heavy, thick back-beat with trippy, flanged keyboards that sounded like they were rolling in a gravity-free, sickening tumble to nowhere. The Warden grabbed Taylor’s pants and began yanking them down. He stopped tugging to inhale and scream into Taylor’s ear like a wild animal, roaring to claim its territory. The Warden beat his own chest and slowly tightened the leather around Taylor’s neck. Whether he passed out or died, Lindsay knew that to the boy either was welcome, and the sooner the better.
Friday, October 26
At midnight Chavez lay on the lounger on the back deck under a dark sky. The only imperfection in his body was the morphine injection he had just made in his arm, where a small drop of blood slowly clotted, the deep red colour fading to an earthy brown. The glass ampoule held only trace amounts of the clear fluid that was now pumping through his veins, courtesy of Dr. Bruce Townler. There was a wash of heat over his body, then the drug infiltrated his mind. His heart rate slowed; his veins became thick with blood, like engorged leeches. Weightless, he felt himself drift skyward, like vapour floating into the infinite blackness. From there he could hear the night animals, the scavengers and hunters prowling the landscape.
It was a crescent moon, floating among the northern constellations and the Milky Way. However, Chavez felt more drawn to the space between the stars, the dark matter. With the house lights blacked out, no neighbours or sources of light anywhere and the shadows of a cromlech — a circle of blackness made by monolithic evergreens — there was no visible difference between the world above and the one below the horizon. Just as there was no difference between where his spirit ended and the dark matter began. He felt as close to peace as he ever had in his life.
He had created a world where he was in total control. Here, in this place, there were no wars to fight, no nightmares to haunt him and no abuse to suffer. He owned the women and the boy, keeping them like pets. He provided the sustenance of his flock and they worshipped him at his pleasure. Every moment of fear the captives felt, every time they ran and cowered at his slightest flinch, it reinforced his knowledge that he had become the most feared thing in their lives, more fearful than death itself. And yet it felt empty.
The euphoria in his flesh would wane and he would take physical pleasure from the boy, who was there for him alone once more. The morphine would release his drifting spirit; he would re-enter the animal body he had perfectly sculpted, manufactured into a killing machine, and plunder the boy’s body. He allowed the thought — that the fires of passion were beginning to vanish with repetition — to enter the forefront of his medicated mind. While the spectators worshipped him with their fear and fuelled his violence,
it would not be enough forever. Only expanding his paradise would bring him joy.
One for sorrow, two for joy. Three for a girl and one for a boy. Five for silver and six for gold. Seven for a secret, never to be told.
Joy. The second girl had been a special sacrifice. He honoured her body by pleasuring it before freeing her spirit and returning it to the earth. For the first time, Chavez considered the need to do the same for Anthony. Maybe Anthony would be happier to return to the world of his vision rather than toil as an unfulfilled soul in this world. Anthony could never be happy on this earth, unlike Chavez, who only required physical comforts. Anthony hungered for the approval of others; the entire planet would not be enough to fill the void.
Anthony’s financial support and fondness for abuse was stifling and growing tiresome. His need to save the world’s savages from themselves, to unify the faiths, was pathetic and futile. He would do this one last deed to buy time to empty the bank accounts, and then return to Colombia, where he would disappear. Winter was coming and he’d had enough.
The difference between the stars and the dark was like the difference between spirit and body. Ying and yang. He had explored the balance of contrast further when he felt the gentle trembling of the frail young girl as he strangled her during the coarse act of murder.
He stood and stretched. It was time. She had already been loaded in the back of the van, and he had to go back to the city to get more drugs and food.
Chavez fired up the cool engine, listening as it struggled to roll over. The clock on the display read 4:12 a.m. The transmission lagged when he put it in drive and the throttle resisted when he pressed down the gas pedal. With a lurch, the truck jumped ahead, and he followed his tracks through the field, over the matted grass to the narrow driveway over the ditch.
When Chavez stopped at the end of the driveway to check for traffic, he was startled by a burst of activity in the bushes beside him. He opened the window and peered into the darkness. His eyes, still adjusted for the night, saw the world in black and white and were able to detect the minutiae of movement.
There was a smell in the air of fresh animal feces, but he could not identify the animal, as the odour was overwhelmed by the smell of panic. When he opened the door, the bushes again exploded with movement. A furious life or death struggle was occurring.
He craned his head and peered into the bush and saw the reason for the agitation. His van had startled a young deer. It had gotten stuck in a wire fence, unable to push through, scared to move back toward the van.
Chavez exited the van and opened the back doors. Beside the dead girl wrapped in plastic were his tools. He found what he was looking for, heavy iron bolt cutters, and approached the animal. It bucked wildly as he neared, and let out a muffled cry. As he drew closer, one of its back legs hit him, gashing his forearm open painlessly with sharp back toes.
Chavez shrugged off the injury — the animal was only scared for its life; it meant no offence. He made three cuts in the wire, and the animal broke free, bursting through the fence and into the field across the narrow country road. Chavez watched it until it disappeared.
24
Anthony had given up on sleep hours ago and found himself in his study, holding in his hands the most important and expensive artifact that he had ever purchased. It had cost him more than one hundred thousand dollars. Similar to tarot cards, Oracle cards were part of the world of cartomancy. Oracle cards, however, lacked the negativity and the dark faces of the tarot. They were the cards of angels, or of angelic mythical creatures like unicorns and mermaids. They were purified and offered clear, readable direction to the reader. What made these Oracles so valuable was their dark origin.
In the fourteenth century, in middle Europe, a group of Celtic priest called druids dreaded the coming expansion of Christianity. They had learned the power of cartomancy from Gypsy travellers and had studied the early power of divination. When the Gypsies grew suspicious that the Druids were actually more interested in the black arts, they encouraged the Druids to refrain from the tarot and to use Oracles instead. This worked only for a short time. The druids were fast learners and they advanced the science further. They developed the Devil’s Blood Oracles and channelled only evil.
Anthony knew that the artwork on tarot and Oracle cards ran deep with symbolism that provided nuance to the card reading, depending on the level of the reader’s understanding. These cards he had purchased were painted by Giovanni Bellini, a Gothic master painter. After they were completed, in 1516, he died under circumstances unrelated to his advanced age.
The few people who knew such cards existed were terrified of what they had been reported to do. They had summoned the deaths of generals, presidents, whole clans and families. They had inflicted plagues of cancer and other diseases on entire villages. Yet Anthony had no fear. The experiences he had had in the other world had convinced him that his spirit was strong enough. The only effect they had ever had on him was bringing him the dream, which was the path to humanity’s salvation.
He opened the case, unwrapped the black cloth and lifted out the deck. There were twenty cards. He kept them face down. He had purchased the cards in Colombia five years ago from a Romanian pawnbroker, a chubby little man with a thick, gaudy birthstone ring on his pinky finger. The pawnbroker spun the ring incessantly in circles, anxious either to get the small fortune Anthony offered or to free himself from the cursed cards. Despite his girth, he appeared sickly, with sunken eyes and infected sores on his face and hands that looked like radiation poisoning.
Tired at the late hour, Anthony now shuffled the cards slowly and deliberately, not wanting to damage their images, nor the direct messages written at the bottom. He had a translation page that the pawnbroker had prepared and Anthony had had verified, still in the cards’ case.
He lay out a three-card spread, face down in a single column. The top card represented Nightmare, the river of subconscious evil that flows through everyone. The second card represented Greed, the selfish trait that drives all of man’s behaviour, the truth so despicable it was denied out of shame. The third card represented War, indicating that every interaction with another person was a battle of power and control, greedily taking everything from them in that moment.
Anthony meditated a moment to make his question clear and slowly flipped the cards over one by one. The first was an angel, six-winged, with eight contorted mouths gnashing at the insects swirling around its head like a crown of flies.
The second card was a blood-soaked child with drooping arms, wailing with fright as she inched toward her mother. The mother waited with a cleaver behind her back.
The third card was an eviscerated man, feeding on his own intestines while the fires of Hell approached from behind.
The images were disturbing, painstaking in detail. Most of their meaning had sadly been lost to the ages. Anthony sat reading the lines together in context with the symbols and images, not merely as three lines of advice. The same Oracles that had told Anthony that he could bring Chavez in, could trust him to do the messy work, were now suggesting something else. He read them one more time, even considered taking a picture or writing down their message, and finally decided the evidence had to exist only in his memory.
He put the cards away, his hands trembling and his heart racing. Only after they were back on the shelf did he begin to reconcile his spirit with what the cards said and what he knew to be the path to salvation.
The way forward had nothing to do with Chavez dropping him for Bruce, nor the sex that had become too rough, nor even the fact that Chavez was attempting to co-opt Anthony’s plan for his own hedonism.
The Oracles were saying it was time for Chavez to have an accident, and for Anthony to give the police enough clues to find him. The cards had said that he would be victorious. The passive sufferer, the secret dreamer, the half-impotent, middle-aged nobody would finally transform and plunder.
Anthony’s house was in darkness, except for a few porch lights. It was nearly four-thirty a.m. The radio was playing Coast to Coast: standard-issue ghost and conspiracy radio that they had been listening to since ten last night. The host, George Noory, interviewed random crackpots with their arbitrary proclamations of global destruction caused by anything from comets or mythic monsters to nuclear war and the return of Jesus coming to punish the world for humanity’s most glorious failings.
Nastos’ phone rang. It was Madeleine. “Where are you?”
Nobody was particularly jubilant at four a.m. Certainly not a wife whose husband hadn’t come home. He said, “I’m with Carscadden. There’s still no sign of Hopkins.” He hoped that saying he was doing this for Hopkins would soften her. It didn’t.
“So you’re hanging out with him for moral support?” It was clear that she didn’t think this was a good enough reason to be out all night. Not when he’d assured her that he wouldn’t go back to that lifestyle.
“I think Anthony Raines had something to do with it. We’re watching his house.” Nastos glanced over at Carscadden. He was listening to the conversation. It probably made a good diversion from exhaustion.
She whispered, half to herself, “I thought these days were over.” Then, louder, she said, “Poor Tara. This is awful.”
