Fasteau's dead.
Rope wrapped around her. Her hands cuffed behind her. Duct tape over her mouth.
A man crouched down in front of her. His hands on her knees.
It wasn't Cobble.
This one had a boyish look to him, but was in his late twenties. Cobble had a helper?
He leaned into her, and she felt his coldness as he touched the edge of her face.
He ripped the duct tape from her lips.
"I want to hear you when I take my memento," he said.
Then, he kissed her on the lips. Before she had a chance to bite him, he moved his lips up her cheek.
He whispered, "Your beautiful dark eyes."
He pressed himself against her.
It sickened her.
And then, she felt his tongue across her eyelid.
And she knew.
"Beautiful darkness," he whispered.
She used her weight to pivot back, but his weight held her in place.
He liked the power.
She tried to go somewhere else in her mind.
Tried to prepare for what this madman was about to do to her.
And then, she felt the suction of his lips against the eyelid of her left eye.
She could not help it.
She screamed.
And screamed.
The pain shot through her like a knife to the skull.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Jane's body went slack.
Scoleri undid her ropes. He lifted her up, holding her to him. She smelled so wonderful. She smelled like pain itself.
Her mind was free. The pain had driven it away for the moment.
Her suffering was fresh.
He kissed her lips, and set her down on the mattress, beside the little boy who stared at him without moving.
"Madonna and child," Scoleri said.
Then, he went back up to the house to see if he could borrow Duane's car.
It was time for Abraxas to get out into the world.
Chapter Sixty
1
Trey opened his eyes. Looked up. The interior ceiling of the car.
Then, a rush of air to his lungs, and a clutching fear.
He sat up, and as he did so felt a hammering pain in his head.
Instinctively, he touched the top of his scalp.
Wet.
Blood.
He had been crammed into an uncomfortable position.
Mother of all migraines pounding at him.
He collected his thoughts.
Deep breaths.
Remembered going off the road.
He saw Elise's hair falling over the back of the seat.
It took him minutes to find the strength to sit up.
Scoleri, gone.
Shit.
"Elise," he said, but his voice was like a croak.
No answer.
"Elise. Elise."
He felt strength in his arms again, despite the soreness. He could move his legs. Felt circulation come back into his extremities.
He rose up completely, and slid along the car seat.
He looked over the edge of Elise's scalp.
Blood.
Shit.
Got out of the car on uncertain legs. Had to hold the car door for balance.
The driver's door was open wide.
The deflated airbag.
Elise, the steering column pressing down on her legs.
Her eyes, staring.
"Jesus," he gasped, and fell over into the snow on his hands and knees, retching.
He could not get it out of his head.
Her face.
What had been done to it.
What Scoleri had done.
His handiwork.
The Handyman, he'd been called before he'd been convicted, and sent to Darden State.
Of course you didn't get me. Didn't kill me. You're only go for women. Only when they're vulnerable. Only when you know they can't fight back.
You wanted me to see this. That's half your fun. You wanted me to see what a monster you are.
You wanted me to get inside your mind.
Well, I'm there, you sick fuck.
Scoleri had taken both of Elise Conroy's eyes.
2
After clenched fists, tears that would not come, and a terrible feeling of helplessness had seized his gut, and then the feeling passed, Trey knew what he must do.
Checked his wristwatch: 10 p.m.
Lost too much time.
Unconscious a couple of hours.
The cell phone, out. He checked the trunk of the Volvo. Flashlight. That was it.
Checked the glove compartment.
Elise's revolver, still there.
He took it, slipping it into his coat pocket.
Lucas, he thought. Get help. Get cops. Get Lucas.
With the flashlight, looked around the snow-covered woods.
Up the embankment.
Up the curve in the road ahead.
A light emanated from within the trees.
A clearing?
Apprehensive, Trey stumbled over the irregular ground, across rocks, up to the roadside.
Dark as all hell.
He went toward the light in the forest, feeling an urgency and a numbness in his mind that was not from the pain at the front of his forehead where Scoleri had slammed him, nor from the bitter cold of the high elevation of the mountain road where it turned up toward Moon Lake.
A numbness about life itself.
It took him nearly a half hour to get up the road toward the light, and then just a few minutes as he trudged through the snow.
When he first saw it, he wasn't sure what to make of it.
Shining the light along the entrance.
What Scoleri had said. Scoleri hadn't lied at all. Scoleri knew.
It's a place in the earth where Papa Bear kept us. Down, down, down. When the world ends, it's the safest place to be. That's what Papa Bear thought. That's what he believed. Some nut had built it before Papa Bear ever owned it. It was a bomb shelter. Under the house, but you couldn't get there from the house anymore. You had to go down this little path to it. We lived down there almost all the time. When Papa Bear got his feeling about the end of the world. Just the kids. He thought we should stay there when the world ended.
Chapter Sixty-One
1
It seemed surreal, like something out of a fairy tale like Hansel and Gretel.
Through the gap in the trees, a thin path, now, simply an indentation of white upon white snow. It led to what seemed to be a rock overhang, a crevasse. Three large lights had been set up in trees to light the rocky area up. He's not hiding. Not in the way you'd think. He's not afraid of anyone. Or else...or else he wants to be caught. That's all it is. He wants to be caught.
Trey had to calm his breathing. He felt as if he were close to Lucas.
Above the crevasse, a thick roof-rock, and above that, perched on the jutting mountainside, a small cabin. But in the indentation of granite, was what appeared to be a small door — almost a trap door. Had this once been a mine? He knew that there'd been mining throughout the mountains back in the 19th century, so this didn't strike him as particularly odd, although it was an odd sort of mine, if it had ever been one.
As he approached the door, he noticed that it was made of some kind of metal, and curved outward at the center, almost like a shield. Someone had made a bomb shelter out of the crevasse. This was somewhat unusual, but Trey had seen a bomb shelter built in the early 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Nuclear War fears of that time in a friend's backyard as a kid growing up in San Bernardino.
He had read, in magazines and online, about bomb shelters built into caves and caverns, but had never seen one before. He went to the door, and pulled on it. It was latched, but not locked.
He's not afraid. He takes them down here. But he's not afraid. Of course not. He thinks he knows God. He thinks he has the Devil in him. He thinks he can make angels.
Trey stood over the entrance into the cavern, the metal door open.
For a moment, he felt the way he had standing outside Program 28's corridor.
2
He shined the flashlight through the doorway.
The entry area was not flat. It dipped nearly immediately down. It was dark, and he could hear water splashing from within.
As he positioned the light's beam around the entry, he saw a hanging work lamp — barely more than a bulb fitted within a protective cup of metal. He reached over to it, switching it on. Immediately, it lit up the first several feet of the shelter.
The floor was rough, and covered with gravel. Water sluiced across the gravel.
An underground spring.
The ceiling was low, and had what were not quite stalactites, but small teats of rock, as if water had been dripping from it over the years, although now, it was dry.
A smell came up from within. Not unpleasant, but a kind of gust of humid air.
Some source of heat within the shelter.
He took a step in, but turned and glanced back at the snow as it came down.
No one followed him.
Good.
Inside the entrance, he felt more alone that he ever had in his life.
He took another few steps in. The ground slanted downward, and he took care with his steps because of the thin layer of water that rushed along beneath his shoes.
Strangely, it wasn't as cold inside as he thought it should've been.
Warmth. Some source of warmth.
A gently heated breeze came up from within the shelter.
Instinctively, he reached for the rock wall, and crouched down a bit, for the ceiling lowered as it went.
Two more steps, and he slipped, falling hard on the ground. He looked at the interior walls. Some kind of limestone along the walls. It was light colored, and had been drawn across as if an ancient cave-painting.
The images were horrific, and he knew that he was in the lair of the killer.
Paintings of demons and angels against a yellow blur of what might've been chalk that was meant to imply fire.
Written on the walls, the words:
SUFFER THE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME.
3
Trey remembered those words on Scoleri's stomach.
What the hell are you doing here?
Can't call the police. Can't get out in the snow.
Lucas is here. I know he's here. I have to find him. I have to get him out.
Something within him that felt more instinctual, bypassing his brains and his fears, took over.
He had a gun, after all.
He had a gun.
The killer of these children was going to be easy to subdue. He was sure. He worked around these people. He knew that the ones who went after children were the weakest of all. Were the least powerful. Were scared of adults. Afraid of what a grown man could do to them.
And even if he was wrong...even if all his experience was in error...all his training...he had to get Lucas out. He had to save him.
He had to make it turn out all right.
4
As he went further down the wet floor, he glanced quickly from one wall to the next, recognizing Biblical quotes.
End of the world quotes, scrawled across the limestone.
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain
He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed
Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death
5
At a certain point, far enough in that he could still see the light at the entryway behind him, the floor began rising again. Now, he knew what the warm humidity was — somewhere within the shelter, there was a hot springs. He had been up to the Arrowhead Hot Springs before, and knew that the underground springs were often fed by this warm or often nearly-boiling water.
Finally, as he went, flashlight in front of him, Trey had to nearly crawl.
This lasted for just a few feet.
Then, having gone upward with the sandy floor, he came into a room that was large enough for him to stand.
This one was lit with white, blinking Christmas tree lights strung up from its ceiling. Somewhere, there was a generator humming.
On the floor, in the corner, piles of cans of tuna and beans and spam and pineapple slices and peach halves, and large twenty gallon blue plastic jugs that were probably filled with water.
This was a survivalist's dream.
Or nightmare.
He saw a pile of something that at first looked like feather dusters, until he got closer. Two sets of white duck wings, freshly cut, with brownish blood at the joint where the cut had been made.
You were here, not long ago. You've left. Maybe the snow will keep you out. Maybe you're stuck on the road.
On the wall was a crudely drawn image of Christ on the cross.
Someone has scrawled beneath it: And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
He shined his flashlight in all the curves of the room, and saw something move in one of the dark corners.
"Lucas?" he whispered, not feeling right to raise his voice any higher. "Lucas?"
And as the beam of light hit what was there, he nearly dropped the flashlight from fright.
Chapter Sixty-Two
1
It was a woman of an indeterminate age, bone thin, her arms strapped to her sides with thick rope. Where her legs should've been, there were bandages around what could only be described as stumps. She was pale, and looked as if she had spent her life in darkness, for when the light hit her eyes, her eyelids fluttered like moths, rapidly, as if the bright light were too sudden for her.
She made a noise, but it seemed like the bleating of a sheep.
Her mouth was blackened, and he didn't see teeth in it at all.
"Jesus," he gasped, and moved toward her.
Her eyes were wide and sunken into their sockets as if she had been kept moments away from death.
For months.
Or years.
You know enough about the patients to know what the predatory mind is capable of.
He knew from Scoleri's words.
He knew.
But he was afraid to say it aloud.
"Ruthie?"
Her mouth went wide as if she wanted to scream, but a rasping sound came out.
"Dear God," Trey said. Sweet Jesus.
He went and undid the ropes that kept her in the chair. Her arms fell at her side, as if they were already useless.
You kept her here all these years. Just like Scoleri said your father had kept her when you were kids. She's never seen the light of day since she was twelve. When your mother thought she had died from a beating. When it was all covered up. Closed up.
But it's still an open wound.
Dear God. Please God protect her. Please someone help.
Her scalp was nearly bald, with strands of hair hanging down across her face that seemed crumpled and misshapen. Her body, what could be seen through the rags that were wrapped around her body like a funerary winding cloth, was covered with sores. Her arms seemed twisted, and because of her extreme emaciation, she seemed old, although he was fairly sure she was only in her twenties.
She began bleating again. A word seemed to form in his mind — what she was trying to say.
He knew in the next moment that it was too late.
She was trying to warn him about something.
Someone.
Her brother.
2
Trey heard the footstep echo in the stone chamber. He turned slightly, not wanting to startle the killer. But wanting to see him. To face him.
Trey felt for
the gun in his coat, but even as he did, he thought that it might not be enough to have a gun.
He would have to use it, and use it correctly.
Something he had not done much of.
Always a first time.
Chapter Sixty-Three
It stood just outside the light of the Mad Place.
Ruthie was squealing. She is a whore! She is the Whore of Babylon! Do not let her hurt you!
It sees the man. Doesn't know him. Why is he here? Why is all this happening? All these intruders? All this now? Why now? Why just when the Other One is gaining the upper hand?
When the Beast is out and coursing through its bloodstream?
It hates the man as much as it hates itself, and when it sees the side of the man's face it knows that the man must die. Or the man must burn. That's it. The man must burn for his sins. Burn in the eternal fires of the rivers of Hell.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Trey touched the gun.
Began to draw it from his coat pocket.
A blur of movement behind him as the man rushed him.
Trey felt pressure in his side as the man knocked him down.
Got the revolver out.
Sig Sauer. Elise.
The gun went flying out of his hand.
He felt a crack of bone along his jaw.
Darkness.
A seeping pain.
Then, nothing.
Chapter Sixty-Five
It stood over the man who had intruded on the Mad Place. It glanced over at the Whore, and she was trying to lift her arms up, but could not. She was weak. She moaned as she watched it go over to her, and crouch down.
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 38
