Facing a set of shelves where his elementary school soccer trophy, Spelling Bee award and ceramic monster figures rested, Aaron lashed out with his arm and sent the items into the adjacent wall. A dent formed in the Sheetrock from the marble bottom of the soccer trophy. His anger only blossomed at seeing the damage. He grabbed his laptop, raised it over his head, ready to smash it down upon his knee, when his phone rang, the chime breaking him from his spell. He realized what a stupid thing he was about to do and set the computer down gently.
His phone’s screen revealed the caller to be private. He swiped the device to answer the call and pressed it against his ear.
“You piece of shit,” he yelled. “I’m done. You hear me? I don’t give a shit if you turn it over to the cops. Do it and I’ll take you down with me. You hear me, asshole?”
No response.
Aaron looked at his phone. The call had ended, the timer blinking. He reached back to throw his phone, but stopped himself. “Fuck!” he yelled and kicked his downed chair, breaking off one of the vinyl-covered plastic armrests.
The phone rang again and he answered the call, saying nothing.
Silence, then: “I can hear you breathing, Aaron. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Fuck. You.”
“Aaron. I thought we were friends.”
“I’m tired of this bullshit. We’re done. You hear me? I did what you wanted, and you set me up. For what, I don’t know, but I don’t care.”
“We’re done when I say we’re done. You hearing me? Or would you rather spend the rest of your life in prison, because that’s what you’ll get for murdering that man.”
“Go to hell. I’m not doing anything for you.”
“Aaron, I’m starting to feel I was wrong about you. Maybe you’re not cut out for this after all, and I should turn the video over to the police and be done with you…”
Aaron wanted to reiterate what he’d said earlier and tell the asshole to do it, turn the video over. He’d show the pig he didn’t care and eliminate the control the man had over him. But the anger he currently felt was dwindling, because he didn’t want to go back to jail, let alone for a hideous, new crime.
“No,” he said, keeping his tone even. “I can handle anything, and I don’t want to go back to prison. But I can’t have any more deaths. I need to know this is going to end, that I can get my life back.”
“That’s much better, Aaron,” the cop said, sounding pleased. “For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to find a new friend. Over the years, I’ve had many.”
“I don’t want to be your friend. I just want you to leave me alone.”
“We’re almost done, Aaron, so don’t fret.”
“Don’t fret?” Aaron asked, his voice rising. “You fucking killed a man. Then set me up for it.”
Anger in his tone, the cop said, “I killed no one that night. Stop accusing me of murdering that man.” Silence, then, in a lighter tone, “The setup, however…well that was all me. I needed to ensure your cooperation.”
“You’ve got it,” Aaron said.
“Wonderful. Have pen and paper handy?”
Aaron picked up a pen on his desk. “Yeah.”
“Write down this address, 529 Locust Way, located in Central Valley. Got it?”
“Yeah. What’s there?”
“An abandoned psychiatric hospital, now frequented by derelicts, teens and urban explorers.”
“Should I bother asking why I need to go there?”
“No, but I do need you to go there and do something for me.”
Aaron ground his teeth in frustration, nostrils flared.
“Be there at six p.m. tonight. Come alone and don’t be late.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then your movie goes public and you go away for a very long time. Don’t test me Aaron. We’re almost done and I’d hate for you to fuck it all up.”
The call ended.
Aaron put the phone on the charger. He was screwed. Another abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. He wondered what “almost done” meant. Was the cop planning on killing him? Had Aaron delivering the cash the way he did—by dropping it and leaving—screwed up the cop’s plan to eliminate him?
Central Valley was forty-five minutes away and he’d have to travel main roads to get there. Bringing the shotgun would be risky. If he was pulled over for any reason—the car searched—he’d be fucked.
The day went by quickly, Aaron spending most of it pondering what the hell was going to happen. He decided to take the shotgun with him after all, figuring the chances were remote of getting pulled over or caught with it. And even if he was stopped, the car searched, he’d just say he’d borrowed it from his mom and didn’t know she’d left her gun in the back seat wrapped in a blanket. The Camaro was registered in his mom’s name, and he was sure she’d back his story, not wanting him to go back to prison.
He left the house at five p.m., feeling a bit nervous about everything, but confident he’d be okay as long as he had the shotgun with him. He also took a small folding knife, which he slid into his back pocket. The blade was only four inches long, but it would do the job. He’d seen an inmate stab another inmate with a sharpened toothbrush and couldn’t believe the amount of blood left at the scene.
When he was halfway to his destination, the GPS on his cell phone guiding him, Hanna called. Seeing her name appear on the screen brought a smile to his face, made him relax a little, his focus taken from what lay ahead. He placed his thumb over the green circle with the phone inside, then moved to the red symbol and hit it, silencing the phone and his spirit along with it.
He wanted to speak with her, see how she was doing, but he couldn’t be distracted now. He was focused, and her beautiful, soft voice might just cause him to falter, either by turning the car around or by screwing up whatever the cop was going to have him do. If he made it past tonight, she’d be the first one he called, but for now, he needed to be selfish, like when he was inside.
In prison, it was every man for himself. Look out for numero uno. Thinking about family was great, but at the right time, like before bed or during a visit. But in the shower, dining hall or yard those things needed to be cleared from the mind, and the hardened criminal needed to emerge.
Chapter Twelve
Aaron drove along the root-warped and cracked Locust Way, a private road that wound through a densely-wooded area to the abandoned psychiatric hospital. With each rotation of the vehicle’s tires, his dread multiplied. His eyes darted to the rearview mirror every few seconds. He could’ve sworn the forest was closing in on him. His flesh grew moist, beads of sweat tickling his lower back. He rolled down his window, needing the fresh air. He remembered the shotgun that was rolled up in the blanket on the back seat and was able to breathe easier.
Finally, the woods opened up to a field of overgrown weeds and grasses. The monstrous structure stood tall. Aaron quickly counted fifteen stories and thought the front of the place was as wide as a football field was long. The road split up ahead. To the left, it led to what Aaron assumed had been the main entrance, now a ruined mess. The red brick was badly faded, with water stains like age spots scattered about. Ivy grew along the corners. Most of the lower windows were boarded over, but higher up they were rectangles of gloom—the plywood missing or having never been installed. The massive front doors were boarded over as well, the large brass handles chained together. Graffiti lined the lower part of the walls like untamed hedges of two-dimensional chaos.
Aaron’s directions were to head to the back of the building, so he went right where the road split and traveled the length of the former hospital to a small parking lot in the rear. Broken glass, beer and soda cans as well as other refuse littered the sunbaked pavement.
He positioned the car so that it faced the way out, and parked in the middle of the lot, about fifty f
eet from the building. From there, he had a clear view of the eerie hospital. The place wasn’t nearly the height it was in the front. He counted only four floors in the back. Almost every window was surrounded by graffiti, the glass broken out long ago. Holes infected the roof like old, unhealed sores.
Aaron shut off the engine. The quiet was too loud. He would find no calm from the tranquility. Unease filled his gut.
He opened the car door, the sound of the creaky hinges clawing at his ears. The wind blew. There was a loud crackling sound from the building. Aaron flinched, ready to dive back into the car, then noticed the plastic bag that was snagged on the end of the gutter, flapping noisily in the wind.
He shouldn’t be there. Not alone. This place made the lumberyard look welcoming. A sinking, foreboding sensation fell over him. Every cell in his body screamed at him to leave. But he refused to listen to the warning, to the built-in sense that told him when something wasn’t right.
He needed to see this through.
Not knowing what else to do, he got back into his car and waited, leaving the door ajar. He slid the key in the ignition, just in case he needed to move, and then his phone rang.
“Hello?” he said.
“You there?” the cop asked.
“Yeah.”
Good, he thought. The fucker doesn’t have eyes on me. Then he wondered if that was a good thing. For if he wasn’t going to be dealing with the cop, then who was he going to be dealing with?
“Excellent. If you’re facing the back of the building, on the right, there is a set of doors. Head inside. There’s a staircase. Take it to the second floor. Walk down the hallway to the door with your name on it. Go inside and wait for my call.”
The call ended and Aaron returned the phone to his pants pocket. He saw the doors near the right side of the building. He looked over his shoulder at the blanket on the back seat. The cop didn’t say he couldn’t bring a weapon.
He got out and shut the door, leaving the gun where it was. With an uneasy sensation running through his veins, he headed toward the building. Loose pieces of gravel crunched under his feet, echoing off the brick building. A crow sat perched on the roof’s peak, cawed, then flew away. His mouth went dry. Aaron struggled to continue, feeling as if the energy had been sapped from him. “You can do this,” he whispered to himself. He had the knife, so it wasn’t as if he was unarmed.
The doors to the building were black with rust spots peppered about. Aaron saw that one was open a few inches. With little effort, he pulled the door open, the hinges squealing like frightened swine. Stale air punched him in the face, nearly knocking him back. Then the smell of mildew and rot was inside him, coating his esophagus like glue. He cringed and coughed, covering his nose with his hand. He spat, needing the horrid taste out of his mouth, then realized he’d left his DNA on the floor and decided he wouldn’t do that again.
Sticking his head back outside, he gulped in fresh air, then went back in. He took a moment, trying to acclimate himself to the environment.
He was in a small foyer. On his right was a staircase that led upward. Sunlight from an overhead window illuminated the way nicely, unlike the hallway on his left that led into utter darkness. He hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight and was grateful the windows weren’t boarded.
Paint and grime hung from the walls in ribbons, like slivers of pale, gouged flesh. Cobwebs draped low overhead and clogged the corners as if stuffed there. The floor was a sheet of dust and debris. A dead rat lay rotting next to a box labeled poison. More graffiti spotted the walls, much of it illegible and corroded.
Aaron breathed through his mouth while he listened for sounds.
The place was morgue quiet.
The staircase appeared solid—a thick iron-framed structure that supported concrete steps. He first tested the handrail, making sure it was strong enough to support his weight, then tried out a few stairs with his feet, finding the concrete as solid as a sidewalk.
He headed upward, moving slowly, his heart thumping hard against his breastbone with each footfall. When he reached the second floor, he saw that the hallway he needed to travel down was lit up. The doors to the numerous rooms on the floor were either open or missing, allowing the sunshine to ignite his path. Each room he passed by was virtually empty of furniture save a couple with rotted and stained mattresses or simple waiting-room-type plastic chairs. As with the stairwell, the hallway and rooms were filthy, with rust and rot along the walls and exposed pipes.
Aaron tried not to think about what he could be walking into, but his mind insisted. He pictured finding Hanna’s uncle’s head. He imagined being tied down to a table and tortured before his own head was removed by some deranged person holding a machete and wearing a mask. Or maybe he’d simply be shot and left to slowly bleed to death. The more his mind raced with these horrific thoughts, the more he wished he had carried the shotgun with him. But for some reason, despite his shaky legs and irregular breathing, he pushed on until he came to a closed door with his name crudely written in red across it, as if it had been painted on with a finger. Upon closer inspection, the hairs on the back of his neck sprang to attention. He didn’t think it was paint on the door but blood. And if it was blood, then whose was it?
Avoiding the letters, he knocked, not sure what else to do.
He heard a rattling inside.
Then a moan.
His arm rippled with goose bumps.
He gripped the door handle, turned it and went in.
He looked around in horror and confusion. The room was clean and smelled of vanilla. The walls appeared to have been scrubbed, even sanded. A built-like-a-tank man, with a deep, jagged scar running the length of his face, was handcuffed to a pipe that extended from the floor to the ceiling. He wore a wife-beater and jeans, his feet bare. Tattoos covered his Popeye-like forearms. Aaron thought if the guy wanted to, he could snap the cuff’s chain in seconds. The man’s eyes bored into him, causing Aaron to look away and glance at the virtually naked woman tied to the bed.
She was lying on her back, breasts exposed. One of her nipples was gone, now a bleeding, fleshy mess. Her limbs were outstretched, ankles and wrists shackled to the steel bedposts. Bleach-blonde hair jutted from the black ski mask covering her entire head, save for the eye and mouth holes. Based on the texture of her skin, some areas wrinkled and leatherlike in appearance, the spider-veined legs and stretch marks around the abdomen and thighs, he guessed she was in her late forties or early fifties. A ball gag protruded from her mouth, hence the moans he’d heard a few moments ago. Her head was arched in his direction. Her eyes were wet, the mascara smeared. She tried talking, but Aaron couldn’t make out a word. She was pleading with him, pulling on her bonds.
Aaron felt the room spin. Heat radiated off his body as if he’d been exposed to high doses of radiation. He didn’t understand any of this, or what the purpose to his being there was. He shook his head, unable to look at the woman, feeling as if the world around him was coming apart. His head ached. He staggered back into the wall. He opened his mouth, ready to wail, when his phone rang.
He tore it from his pocket. “What the fuck is this?” he asked, trying to catch his breath.
“Aaron, I take it you found your room?” the cop said, sounding pleased.
“I don’t know what kind of twisted shit you have going on here, but I won’t be a part of it. I’m not killing anyone.”
“No one’s dying, Aaron. Relax. All you have to do is make a decision.”
“What?” he asked, putting a hand to his chest, feeling as if all the oxygen in the room was being sucked out.
“Decide.”
“Decide what?”
“Who’s going to rape the woman on the bed.”
Aaron froze, as if he’d been slapped. The word rape hit a nerve with him, igniting his anger. His ability to breathe became easier, his strength returning.
<
br /> “No one’s killing or raping anyone,” he said.
“It’s simple, Aaron. Either you climb on top of that woman and stick your dick in her—and I don’t care which hole you use—or you pick up the handcuff key that I’ve taped to the back of the door and free the man with the scar, and he’ll do it. Now before you decide, I must inform you that the man with the scar is one mean, nasty, deranged human being. He’ll hurt her, Aaron. Really hurt her. Make her bloody. Cut, burn and beat her. As you can see, he’s already taken off one of her nipples and used the blood to write your name. But you have my word, she won’t be killed.”
Silence.
“Aaron?”
“I won’t do it.”
“There is a third choice.”
Aaron knew the answer. “You give the video to the cops.”
“There’s no getting anything by you, is there?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You’ve got five minutes to decide, then I decide for you. I’ll stay on the line while you think about it. Oh, and if you decide she’d suffer less with you, but you don’t think you’d be able to get it up, keep it hard, I’ve left a few pecker-hardening pills in a small bottle next to the bed. They should do the trick nicely. Timer starts now.”
The woman on the bed was crying, no longer struggling against her bonds. The man with the scar had been watching her, like a lion crouched in tall grass ready to pounce on a gazelle. But now the man was staring at Aaron, as if waiting for him to make a decision. His face was expressionless, but his eyes spoke volumes. Aaron shivered. As if sensing his fear, the man clenched his fists, knuckles cracking. Veins popped along his arms like serpents. There was no doubting the man’s malevolence. If Aaron released him, the woman would suffer greatly.
He moved to the bed and avoided looking directly at the woman. She was moan-pleading again. He reached down, picked up the bottle of pills and stared at it.
The Unhinged Page 11
