by Ted Dekker
The man waited a few seconds before responding. “My name is Alvin Finch.”
Alvin. For some reason Ryan found the name sickening.
“Hello, Alvin. Nice of you to finally come.”
“You may also call me Satan.”
The suggestion hardly surprised Ryan. That it was spoken with such sincerity, as if by a boy who was showing a neighbor his marble collection, was disturbing; but not even this should have surprised him.
“You may stand up now,” Alvin said.
Ryan sat up, let his head clear, then lowered his feet to the concrete floor. He was still dressed in the same tan slacks he’d been wearing for over a week now and they were badly smudged. His brown boots were dusty and his socks had dried to his feet.
In contrast, the man who stood by the door looked as though he’d just stepped out of the shower before slipping into a freshly pressed shirt. Even from this distance Ryan could smell the soap he’d used or the cologne he’d applied.
Alvin was a tall white male with close-cropped hair who had a face you might see looking into any shopwindow at the nearest mall. His eyes were set deep and hidden by shadows.
Ryan stood slowly, undisturbed by the sight of the man who’d brought hell to them, though everything within him knew he should be disturbed. Deeply distressed. Raging with fury.
What was more disturbing to him was the open door that let in a small amount of light. BoneMan blocked his path, but the hallway beyond was screaming to Ryan, begging him to rush through the basement in search of his daughter.
“Before we finish this, I want you to acknowledge a few things to me,” Alvin said. “I’ve been wanting to break your bones from the first time I read about you in the papers two months ago. It’s been very difficult for me to show my restraint, but I’ve done it and I think it’s been worth it.”
The man was intelligent, not some clumsy butcher who just happened to evade the FBI for years.
“But first I will make my confession. Okay?”
That the man was asking his permission meant something, but Ryan was having a difficult time keeping his mind off the empty hallway beyond him.
“Okay.”
“I appreciate the fact that you broke his bones. It was a noble beginning. I went to his house and I broke the rest of his bones the next night.”
He’d killed Welsh?
“That father of lies is dead now,” Alvin said.
Ryan didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
“Last night I went back to your house and I broke the witch’s bones. They will find her floating in the pool, full of chlorine.”
Celine?
A fist of nausea rose into his throat. He wanted to scream out his protest, but he knew that he could do no such thing. He refused to weaken his control now, while the hall behind the monster was empty and begging.
Celine? Dear God, Celine was dead… .
“The whole state is having a fit,” Alvin said. “They seem to be more disturbed than you are. You didn’t love that witch.”
He wouldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak.
“You were never a good husband and you were an even worse father. It’s important to me that I hear you confess your sin.”
No! No, I will not confess my sins to you! How dare you judge me?
A voice whispered through his mind, warning him that he wasn’t behaving as he knew he must. He had to be calm and reasoned and ready to move when the moment of opportunity presented itself.
For a long time BoneMan stared at him. Finally his shoulders sagged just barely and a faint frown bent his lips. “Then she was right, you are the father of lies. Do you deny your failure?”
“No.”
“But you refuse to acknowledge that you don’t deserve to be her father.”
“Because I do. I’m trying to be her father.”
“It’s too late,” BoneMan said.
“I wasn’t her father before. Not the way I want to be her father now. She isn’t my seed, I adopted her, but I never became her father. But that changed in the desert.”
“So you admit you’re not even really her father.”
“Yes.”
His answer seemed to confuse the man. This was the kind of reason and control that would give them hope, he realized. And although BoneMan knew how to hate with more passion than most men, real love would confuse him.
“I admit, I’m not her father, not really,” Ryan said. “But that’s changing now.”
“Now that you’re in my house.”
“Now that I’m pursuing her love.”
The words seemed to take Alvin Finch off guard. He was a man of exceptional control but now he blinked; he began to sweat.
“She hates you,” BoneMan said.
No. No, she couldn’t possibly hate him. Maybe on a hot afternoon when harsh words about who she was dating were exchanged, but not now when they were both fighting for her life.
Alvin Finch was so devoid of love that he didn’t know how to recognize it. He was indeed the Satan in the mix, bent upon winning the heart of his victim, though no one could possibly love him. His victims might show him a mirror of love to win his kindness, but they would never be able to return real love any more than he could receive it.
“You are the father of lies,” Ryan said. “You can’t be a true father.”
The man’s breathing thickened. “She wants me to be her father.”
“But deep inside she wants me to be her father.”
“You’re lying. You’re the father of lies! We both have the same soft skin. She’s the most beautiful person I’ve seen. I want to be like her. She wants to be like me.”
“Given the chance, she would kill you.”
“You’re lying. You’re a filthy liar.”
“Given the chance, she would come to me.”
Ryan knew that he was departing from his resolution to remain perfectly stoic for her sake, but realizing that BoneMan saw himself as a kind of Satan, he thought it only prudent to point out that in the real world, everyone fled the terrors of evil and ran for the loving father.
The thought stopped him cold.
BoneMan withdrew a pair of handcuffs and tossed them onto the concrete in front of him. “Place them on your broken wrist and turn around.”
He did as the man ordered, hands together behind his back. When Alvin had clasped the second cuff on his right hand, he grabbed a fistful of Ryan’s hair behind his head and turned him around. Holding him with an outstretched arm, BoneMan pushed him forward, maintaining a tight grip on his hair.
How many other victims had he experimented on to perfect this effective hold? He steered Ryan from the room and down a hall toward a door at the end. Reached around him, removed an unlocked padlock looped through the latch, and shoved the door wide.
Lamplight filled the room beyond with orange light.
He steered Ryan inside and slammed the door behind them.
Already Ryan was looking, searching the room with wide eyes, but his head was tilted back and he couldn’t turn it to see the entire space.
He was only interested in seeing one thing and his heart felt like it had lodged stubbornly in his throat, refusing to resume its beat until he saw her.
But she wasn’t here.
Bethany wasn’t in the room!
BoneMan unlatched his handcuffs and released his hair. Ryan spun around looking, searching.
He saw the lamp.
He saw the bed.
He saw something fixed to the wall.
He saw a pot on the floor.
He saw Alvin behind him.
But he did not see…
A thin girl dressed in dirty flannel pajama bottoms and a filthy T-shirt stepped out of the shadows from behind a wood post that had blocked his view of her.
This was his daughter. Her face was soiled and streaked with dried tears. Her long hair was tangled and matted and her eyes looked like they’d been pushed deeper into blackened eye sockets.
&
nbsp; This was Bethany.
And then Ryan saw that her left hand was swollen. Three of her fingers were crooked. Alvin had broken three of her fingers.
Ryan had spent two days calming himself; sinking slowly into the place of reason and reckoning where mindless knee-jerk reaction was laid to rest so that even the cleverest of opponents could be outwitted and dismissed. He knew that he was working not only against BoneMan but for Bethany, hoping to outmaneuver the one while drawing out the other. He was unequivocally committed to bringing to bear on this matter the last reserves of his considerable skill, developed over countless hours in many continents, having saved too many lives to count.
But in that moment, seeing Bethany for the first time in two months, the cords that moored his arms and legs to the harbor of reason snapped and he felt powerless to hold his emotion at bay.
He was sobbing immediately, blubbering like a child as he stumbled forward, arms wide.
He couldn’t even say her name. He shouldn’t be overwhelming her like this, he was likely to terrify her, but he just couldn’t stop himself.
Ryan fell upon her and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. His mouth opened in an involuntary wail, but he had no breath to weep with, no voice to cry out; his chest and throat were locked in a vise.
She didn’t move.
Behind him, BoneMan didn’t stop him.
Then he caught his breath and he began to cry aloud, shaking like a fool while his body enfolded hers. He kissed the crown of her head and he held her close and he wept. He could smell the musky scent of sweat mixed with soap or lotion in her hair.
Tears streamed from his eyes and wet her hair as he sobbed, but he was too far gone to stop now. Nothing mattered more to him now than this moment, clinging to his daughter.
She was alive. She’d been lost but he’d found her and now she was in his arms. No matter what happened, he would have this moment.
“I love you,” he managed to say. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”
A hand pressed against his chest, her first gentle embrace. What had the monster done to her? She could barely move! He’d beaten her into the ground and now she stood like a drugged doll, barely able to move!
The thought brought a chill to his bones and he kissed her head again, then again.
Dear Bethany! Dear Bethany, I love you so much, oh God, how I love you!
Her hand was pressing against him with surprising strength. She still had her strength, that was good, that was good to know. And now her other hand, the one that was broken, pushed against his stomach.
“Don’t,” she said.
Her voice was strong as well. And it was bitter.
“Don’t!”
She pushed him harder and only then did it occur to Ryan that his daughter, who’d been in captivity for more than a week now, was pushing him away. He was smothering her and she needed space to breathe.
But she was in his arms now; how could he dare let go of her now?
“Stop it!” She shoved hard. “Get off me!”
She was rejecting him? How was that possible? What had BoneMan done to her? He wouldn’t let her go, not after everything. Not after seeing so many children die in the desert. Not after breaking Burton Welsh’s wrist. Not after breaking his own hand and rushing here to save her.
Something slapped his face and he let go instinctively. Bethany glared past him, scorn etched deeply in her dirty face. He turned and followed her stare, expecting to see that she was looking at BoneMan, but it was only an empty wall.
Ryan spun back. “Bethany?” His mouth and throat felt like sandpaper. “What… what did he do?”
Her eyes slowly turned to him and in them he saw not even a flicker of grace or kindness.
“He’s only going to kill us both now,” she said.
“No, he would have already—”
“You’ve never been a father to me,” she bit off in a low voice. “You were never there when I needed you. I’ve hated you most of my life. What makes you think you can come in here and expect me to care what he does with you now?”
“Bethany, I… please—”
“He says you can live if I show you how I feel and send you away, and that’s what I’m going to do. It’s the only way now.” She glared at him. “You do want me to live, don’t you?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Then let’s get this over with.”
It was all happening too quickly, like some sick initiation in the middle of night. He hadn’t expected her to be so harsh or calculating. What she was saying might make sense; it might if he knew everything. But the bitterness in her voice, the darkness in her eyes…
She might be doing what BoneMan had insisted she do, but she was doing it as if she were BoneMan herself! How could she be so cold?
To save him? Yes. She was granting him his life perhaps. But more than this she was doing it because her psyche belonged to Alvin. The man had won her over. She couldn’t know what she was doing!
“Bethany—”
Something hit the side of his head and he fell to the ground, unconscious.
36
THERE WERE TWO things that Alvin Finch, aka BoneMan, wanted; nay, three that he would cut off his own hands to possess. His daughter, because Bethany was the seed of his life and all that was beautiful in him.
To crush the father’s heart who, having been rejected, would be forced to live out a terrible life with the knowledge of his utter failure.
To break both of their bones if he couldn’t have Bethany’s love.
Naturally, he would allow her to express that love in new ways—for example, maybe she could take to breaking bones with him on a regular basis as they sought other daughters.
Alvin remained calm as he always did when he broke bones, but this time, controlling his pleasure was more difficult than he remembered it being. The idea that had grown in him was now before him, illuminated by the lamp’s flame.
He’d hoisted the man up on the cross upside down, then strapped his ankles spread-eagle to the frame by running rope through a hole he’d drilled in each block of wood for this purpose. He’d also tied the man’s hands to the bottom portion of the cross frame and strapped his mouth with tape.
Then he’d asked Bethany, his promise of God, to wake him, and after looking at him with long eyes, she’d done so by slapping his face.
The father now hung awake, face red and eyes bulging, silent because of the tape, but inside surely screaming. Screaming with enough force to expel his lungs and his intestines.
This was what Alvin Finch had learned: you can break their bones, but it is far better to break their heart.
Suffice it to say that he had broken the father’s heart.
Satisfied, he picked up the sledgehammer leaning against the wall and walked over to the daughter, who stared at the cross without expression. He held out the hammer to her.
She took it with her right hand and supported its weight with her left, though it was badly swollen. The sledgehammer was longer than her arm and the black iron head was the thickness of her calf. Seeing her frail frame gripping such a large hammer was an interesting sight.
He nodded his encouragement and indicated the short stool he’d placed by the man’s head. “I’ll hold his foot steady.”
She just looked at him, lost. Was she thinking about backing out?
A shot of adrenaline washed through his blood and he felt his neck grow suddenly hot. If she backed out now, he would not be responsible for the pain he would inflict on her skeleton. No judge could blame him for what he would do to the father. Every bone, not just those that could be broken in the extremities, but all of them would have to be cracked or crushed. If she betrayed him now…
The daughter walked away from him and mounted the stool, hammer in hands.
His anger fell away like dead leaves in the fall. In fact, he regretted his doubt. How could he doubt such a lovely daughter who had agreed with him at each turn, though he’d h
ad to break three of her fingers to convince her that he was right?
He hurried up to the cross, grabbed the bared right foot, and pulled it away from the cross so that she would have ample room to land the blow.
“Right on the heel. You’ll have to swing the hammer hard and land it square or it’ll slip off. Don’t hit me.”
She held the hammer over her shoulder and stared at the heel. “The heel,” she said.
“Just the heel.”
“And you let him live?”
“We agreed on that.”
“I can’t kill anyone. I’m not like that.”
“Not yet, no. Just the heel, I promise, my child.”
The last two words came out awkwardly, but with time they would flow from his tongue like honey. And with time she would beg to break all of the bones of anyone they took.
He’d thought about the possibility that she could direct the hammer’s blow to his head, of course, and standing here beside her the concern reasserted itself. She was a clever little pig. She might just try it. It’s what he would do and she was very much like him.
“Hold on.”
He bent and picked up a five-foot length of rope left over from strapping Evan up. He quickly looped it around the man’s toes and stepped back, pulling the foot flat so that the father couldn’t ruin Bethany’s blow by twisting.
He was now slightly behind her, making a blow to his head impossible.
She looked at him dully.
“There,” he said. “Remember, swing as hard as you can.”
She faced the father again. He was trying to talk through the tape, but she ignored him and brought the sledgehammer back.
There were tears in her eyes, but her jaw was fixed. Her arms were trembling, but the hammer was heavy and her left hand wasn’t entirely functional. And besides that, striking that first blow was always the hardest. It had taken him three months from the time he’d decided to kill his mother to work up the courage to break her bones.
He’d wept with each blow.
“It’s okay, my child. You’ll get used to it. I’m right here behind you.”
She held the hammer cocked above his foot for a long time, trembling so badly that Alvin doubted she could swing straight. She would miss and lose her resolve.
