The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen

by R. T. Lowe

  “Rise and shine, little missy,” the voice said.

  The sensation of being shaken grew steadier, more forceful. And it was her foot, she decided. The bottom of her foot. Someone was… kicking her? No. Not kicking her, but… prodding her. The hard square toe of a boot? She heard herself moan. It sounded funny, muffled. Her eyes snapped open—but the darkness remained. Confusion spilled over her in drowning waves. Was she blind? Did something happen to her? In her mind’s eye, she saw an image of herself trapped below ground. Or was she trapped in some strange unreality? Trapped in a dream—behind the door. Then she felt something being pulled over her head, and a moment later, there was light. She blinked against the sudden brightness, squinting into the dirty golden cast of a late summer afternoon. Sunlight filtering in from above fell over her black yoga pants in a stripey pattern. She straightened her legs, then drew them up to her body and hugged them tight, cradling herself in a fetal position.

  Where the hell am I?

  “Oh wakey wakey, little girly.”

  That voice again. Where was it coming from?

  She thought hard, and the effort made her brain hurt. The last thing she remembered was walking down the driveway before breakfast to get the mail. She was expecting—hoping—to get an early admissions acceptance letter from Vanderbilt. But there was just junk and some bills for her parents. She remembered flipping through an Old Navy catalogue and then… darkness. So what happened? What happ—

  Abduction.

  The word shattered her mind like a baseball crashing through a stained glass window. Her heart stopped beating and she went cold with fear. She screamed. Nothing came out. She tried again and gagged. Then she realized her mouth was open—pried open. Something was in it. Something had been stuffed in her mouth so deep it brushed against her tonsils. It tasted like sweat, sour milk, and lunch meat. The smell (and the taste) was starting to make her sick.

  Then she saw it.

  The thing hovering over her was mountainous. Its sheer bulk mystified her. It was too big to be a person. But her mind was playing tricks on her. Because it looked like a person; it had legs, arms, and… was that a head? But it was too gargantuan. It couldn’t be human. It had to be something else. Didn’t it?

  “You hear that?” the monstrous thing said, and cupped a cinder block-sized hand to its ear. “That, my dear Angela, is the sound of a cargo train.” The ground vibrated. She felt it in her legs and in her back, then the ground shook and swelled, jostling her like a trip down an unpaved country road in an old car. Shafts of sunlight streaming in through gaps in the walls caught the dust that swirled down from the ceiling and the little plumes that eddied up from the dirt floor.

  She felt her eyes bulge in shock. It was a person. A man. Her disbelieving eyes drifted up to his face and cold fear flooded through her. She knew who it was. She sucked in a startled breath and gagged on the thing in her mouth. She coughed and choked and gasped for air. But each time she inhaled, it tickled the back of her throat, setting off another round of coughing, making her body tremor. Her vision shrank in on itself, starting at the edges. Everything went dark. She felt herself slipping into the blackness, then the voice—the chilling voice from behind the door—called her back to the light.

  “The trains pass by here every five minutes this time of day,” the man was explaining. He lifted his chin as if to indicate an area somewhere off in the distance and his head scraped against the ceiling, causing the corrugated-metal panels to shudder. He didn’t seem to notice. He raised his voice a notch so she could hear him over the shriek of the train’s whistle. “They’re loud enough to mask almost anything. Anything could happen to you in here.” He gestured around him, at what appeared to be the inside of a shed of some kind (four walls and a ceiling—all dilapidated, rusty, and streaked with stains). “And no one would hear a thing. You could scream. You could cry. You could bang on the walls. It won’t matter. Nobody will hear a thing. Nobody. Does that frighten you?”

  It did.

  Her heart was racing so fast it thundered in her ears. Her brain felt soggy and useless, but some portion of it was sputtering into gear: It occurred to her that the train tracks were on the town’s outskirts, a desolate area on the wrong side of the river—a place she’d always avoided. A place where bad things happened. She shivered and hugged her legs to her chest. She felt so cold. Partly from the fear, but she knew something else was at work. Drugs? Did he drug her? He must have. She was freezing, and Louisiana was in the midst of a brutal heat wave. She figured the air in the shed had to be molten at this time of day. But she was trembling like the emaciated greyhound she’d talked her parents into rescuing from the animal shelter just last week. She hadn’t named him yet, still deciding between Gail and Peeta.

  She steeled herself for a moment, then looked up, eyes wide, mouth open. The face staring back at her was inhuman. The head was far too big to be a head; it was the size of the beach ball she’d been keeping in the trunk of her car all summer. And his features were all wrong—distorted and… confusing. Parts of his face were missing: an ear, a chunk of nose, and one side of his upper lip. She couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. So she closed her eyes and prayed that this was just a dream, just an awful, awful dream.

  She waited. The ground was still. The whine of the train’s whistle faded. She opened her eyes.

  He was still there. Smiling. This wasn’t a dream. She could feel the panic and fear bubbling up from her stomach, wrapping its icy fingers around her heart. Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes, and before long her cheeks were slick and wet.

  He stared down at her with a bemused expression on his terrible face. His dark eyes seemed to be dancing. She’d always imagined the eyes of a serial killer would be cold and lifeless, like the black soulless pits of a Great White Shark or some other brainless animal that acted on millions of years of evolutionary instinct. But the man’s eyes were burning with something—pleasure?—excitement?—anticipation? And oddly, it reminded her of the way her friend Ashley had looked at her when she was crowned homecoming queen at the school assembly last fall.

  Then he spoke: “I believe introductions are in order. I didn’t get a chance before, because you were, well, unconscious. My name’s Nick Blair, but I’m sure you know me by another name.”

  He waited for a response.

  The rag in her mouth (if that’s what it was) made it impossible to formulate words. Instead she wept as a little voice rang hollowly in her bewildered head: This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t—

  “Well nod if you’ve heard of the Faceman,” he said, sounding disappointed.

  She managed a quick nod as the tears streamed down her face. She started sobbing. She wanted to beg him to let her go, but she couldn’t move her tongue and the words came out in choking, garbled spasms.

  He leaned forward and his lips crept slowly back over his gums, revealing gold teeth filed to sharp points. He reached out with one hand, and Angela’s eyes bulged as fingers the size of corn cobs stabbed at her face. She tried to lurch away from him, but his fingers were already in her mouth and she felt her lips straining wide at the corners. “We can’t very well have a proper conversation like this,” he said, and yanked out the rag all at once, a red bandanna crusted over with splotches of something that she hoped were just food stains. He stepped back, stuffing it into his pocket.

  She flinched and banged up against the wall. The shed rattled and creaked. Her reactions were delayed, and her joints felt stiff. She dug her heels into the floor and pushed out, scrabbling to get away. But her muscles were frozen in terror and her legs felt dead. She was also backed up against a wall; a ridged panel was digging into the flesh between her shoulder blades. The panel was thin and unbraced and it bowed out limply, which allowed a finger of yellow light to seep in through a rift near the floor.

  A grin stretched across his face as he looked down on her. “I know—I’m not what most teenage girls consider a face man. I’m
not exactly Bradley Cooper. But I think you know why I’m called the Faceman.”

  She said nothing. As her mind started to resolve itself to the fact that her alarm clock wouldn’t be saving her, her throat began spasming in panic. Her heart pounded. She felt winded, like someone had punched her in the gut. A cold layer of sweat was starting to show through her T-shirt. The sour taste in her mouth lingered.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  She nodded.

  “Was it the cop? I bet it was the cop.” He shook his head, but he seemed pleased. “I knew that was a mistake. But I have a complicated relationship with the authorities. And that cop, well, he reminded me of this guy I knew from my military days who pissed me off one too many times so I—how do I put this delicately?—I ripped his fucking head off.” He threw his head back and bellowed laughter. The sound rolled around the shed like a summer storm. Angela shrank back against the wall as the Faceman stared at his hands—hands that were without doubt big enough and strong enough to rip off a man’s head.

  Of course she knew why he was called the Faceman. Everyone did. For the past three years, a serial killer had terrorized the entire country, going from state to state, and from town to town, killing teenagers. But he didn’t just kill them—he erased their faces. Six point blank rounds with a .44 magnum. Her parents, like millions of others across the country, wouldn’t let her go out alone after dark (or out at all), and they insisted she carry pepper spray in her bag. Then at the end of last year, a cop had pulled over a van for speeding on a country road in the Midwest. The driver climbed out of the vehicle, pointed a gun at the officer’s face, and blew his brains out the back of his head. Then he proceeded to shoot him five times in the face as he lay twitching on the side of the road. This was all caught on video from a camera mounted inside the patrol car. Every TV network in the country ran the censored footage on a loop (her parents wouldn’t let her watch it), and every newspaper and magazine from coast to coast plastered the images of the shooter’s face on their front pages. When the un-pixelated version hit YouTube, it racked up more views in one week than all of Beyonce’s music videos combined and it crashed the website for five hours. The killer’s trademark—one bullet to the head and five to the face—was unmistakable, but the country waited in breathless anticipation for the official announcement. The results from the ballistics tests confirmed what everyone was expecting: The gun that killed the cop was the same weapon used in the murders of at least fifty-seven teenagers. Two days later, the Faceman’s identity—the identity of the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history—was released: His name was Nick Blair. He was thirty-three. A former Navy Seal. A decorated war hero.

  “I didn’t always look like this, you know.” The Faceman smiled. Before Angela could consider what he was smiling about, he’d reached behind his waist and came away with a knife. She winced and jerked backward and her head cracked against the wall. This was no ordinary kitchen knife. Angela had never seen anything like it before; it was long (at least the length of his muscular, vein-bulging forearm), and she supposed it was a hunting knife, an instrument used to gut animals—big animals like elk and bear. He was still smiling as he pressed the flat side of the blade against his face. The tip rested on the side of his head. He was using it as a pointer, and what he was pointing at was so gross it was hard to look at: Where there should have been an ear, there was just a dark hole.

  “This ugly crater here was once a nice piece of cartilage. Then some shrapnel blew it off. It was just like yours. Not as petite—of course. I’ve always been rather large for my age. At fifteen, I was big enough to bring down a bull with just these mitts of mine.” He squeezed his hand into a bowling ball-sized fist. “That was the year my step daddy came at me with a pair of hedge clippers. They still haven’t found his body.” He doubled over in a deafening roar of laughter. Angela could feel the wall vibrating against her back.

  “They should’ve asked the pigs what happened to him.” A sly grin flickered on his face for an instant. “Anyway, I don’t mean to digress. So what do you think of my chompers?” He peeled his lips back and jutted out his chin so that even the teeth in back were visible. “I once had my own. They were as white as an elephant’s tusks. But a sniper in Afghanistan put a bullet through my cheek.” His jaw tightened and he paused for a moment. “The bastard blew ‘em out my mouth.” The tip of the knife settled on a round, quarter-sized scar below his cheekbone. “That and some of my upper lip, which I’ve been told makes me look like a perpetual snarler. I strongly suspect that’s the reason I’m finding it tough these days to maintain a proper social calendar.” He laughed at that, but not as loudly as before, and it made Angela think it wasn’t the first time he’d used that line. “And I always liked gold, so I thought why the hell not? Why shouldn’t I treat myself? Life can’t just be work, work, work, all the time, now can it?” He raised an eyebrow and added: “’But why the fangs?’ you might be asking yourself. Is it because”—he let the word hang in the steamy, dust-moted air, his eyes trained on hers—“I eat my victims?” He gnashed his teeth together in a hard click, drawing blood that dribbled over his lower lip and down his chin in two unbroken lines.

  Angela cringed and her hands involuntarily flew up to her face, then settled back down around her knees where she clasped them together. She was sobbing louder now, rocking herself, sucking in air in great shuddering gasps. Hysteria was beginning to set in despite her attempts to stay calm.

  The Faceman shook his head in response to his own question. “I prefer ethnic food. And by that, I don’t mean I eat minorities.” He grinned broadly. “I did this”—he tapped the knife against his teeth—“because it looks badass and scares the shit out of people. And I have to confess”—he leaned in close as if he was disclosing a secret to a trusted friend—“I love scaring the shit out of people. Because without fear, where’s the fun in all this?”

  A train rumbled by and the Faceman paused to listen. “Don’t you just love trains?” he asked cheerily after the rumbling had subsided to a faint, distant pulse.

  She nodded. She wasn’t exactly sure why, but the voice in her head was telling her that disagreeing with him could be fatal.

  “And this was once a fine dignified nose, I’ll have you know,” he resumed, slowly tracing the tip of the knife over the arched side of his asymmetrical upper lip. “But then a bunch of terrorists in Pakistan went and broke it. But don’t you worry. They got what was coming to them. Now that was a good time. And I got a medal of commendation for my efforts.” He looked up at the ceiling and smiled at the memory. “Sorry, you’ll have to forgive my vanity. This isn’t about me—I realize that—but I am trying to explain something to you. You see—if that wasn’t enough to spell the demise of my poor nose, I got into a little tussle with a boy of seventeen—the same age as you—and the little rascal tore most of it off with his bare hands.” He grinned wickedly. “Now that boy had what it takes. He passed the test. The question is… will you?”

  Angela knew she had to get a grip on herself, yet the fear was coiling around her like a living thing, leeching away her resolve and her ability to think. But she had to do something. So she swallowed down the dread and the terror, then drew in a deep breath and focused on one thing: getting out of here. There had to be a way out. The heroines in the books she liked to read always found a way out. They always survived. And she was clever and strong, just like the girls in those books. She just needed to think. This wasn’t how her life was going to end. If her life was a story, then she was the heroine, and of one thing she was absolutely sure: heroines don’t die on page twenty. And her story was still in the early chapters.

  But the grotesque man towering over her was a giant. And he looked strong—strong enough to bench press a car. Even if he didn’t have the knife, she didn’t have any chance of overpowering him. She was one of the best athletes at her school—a starter on the basketball team and an all-league soccer player for the past two years. But the Faceman was huge. Big
enough to squash her like a bug. People can’t be this big, she thought. It was almost like he was unreal: The monster in a fairy tale that lives under a bridge terrorizing travelers until the heroine comes along to dispatch the horrible beast with a swift stroke of her shining sword. But no one was coming to her rescue; she would have to do it herself. She glanced all around, thinking. The shed was empty except for some cigarette butts and an orange candy wrapper sticking out of the dirt in the corner. There were no windows. The lone exit was a narrow cut-out on the far side—directly behind the Faceman. Rectangular lengths of light probed through wedges in the oxidized metal sheets, but they were far too narrow to squeeze through.

  The Faceman was watching her, his eyes colorless and measuring. “As much as I’m enjoying our little chat, it’s time to begin the test.” He motioned with his hand. “Stand up. Up, up, up. C’mon now.”

  She wasn’t sure if her legs were going to cooperate, but it didn’t look like she had a choice. She braced her back against the wall, and using it for support, slowly pushed herself up. Her legs were shaking, and her feet felt cold, prickly and a little numb, but she kept her balance. She looked straight ahead and sucked in a panicked breath. Her head only reached up to the bottom of the Harley Davidson logo on the Faceman’s shirt. He had to be at least eight feet tall. She felt like a toddler.

  “You’re an only child?” he asked.

  She couldn’t answer. Her vocal cords seemed paralyzed as she gaped at the hulking behemoth. His chest was three times as wide as a normal man’s. Where on earth does he get his clothes? You can’t buy—

  The knife flashed out at her face, slicing through a flutter of sun caught dust. She jumped back and crashed into the aluminum panel. Better reflexes this time. Her legs felt less stiff, less like wooden boards. Not springy, but better than before. That was the good news. The bad news was the knife was so close to her face she could see the individual serrations etched into its polished surface.