Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  Ben Anderson goes to bed Sunday night, lying next to his wife in the comfort and safety of their Pennsylvania family home, to wake up the next day in a rundown motel in California — alone.

  He doesn't know how he got there, he doesn't know where his family is, and written in dried blood on the bathroom door are the words LET THE GAME BEGIN.

  Soon Ben is contacted by Simon. Simon knows all there is to know about Ben, more than he cares to remember himself.

  If Ben wants to save himself and his family, he will have to do everything Simon says.

  As the game begins — with stakes much higher than either man can imagine — no one knows where it will lead or how it will end.

  Only one thing is for certain: this time the game will change everything.

  praise for USA TODAY bestselling author ROBERT SWARTWOOD and MAN OF WAX

  “Man of Wax grabs you by the throat in the first chapter and never lets go. A suspense-filled thrill ride with plenty of shocks along the way. Read it!”

  —F. Paul Wilson

  “One of the best ‘scary’ stories I have read this year ... great job, I loved it.”

  —The Parents’ Little Black Book of Books

  “The action gets pumped up through the roof.”

  —Pajiba

  “Robert Swartwood is the next F. Paul Wilson—if F. Paul Wilson’s DNA was spliced with Michael Marshall Smith. If you haven’t yet read Swartwood, you’re missing out.”

  —Brian Keene

  “An exceptional novelist.”

  —Douglas Clegg

  MAN OF WAX

  ROBERT SWARTWOOD

  Contents

  Promotion Book Trailer

  Man of Wax

  About the Author

  Excerpt from The Inner Circle

  Excerpt from Wayward Pines: Nomad

  Also by Robert Swartwood

  Copyright

  Promotional Book Trailer

  View the Man of Wax book trailer at YouTube.

  MAN OF WAX

  To Holly, My Other Half

  In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don’t dare disobey. Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket. But then I remembered that I had mostly studied geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the little fellow (rather crossly) that I didn’t know how to draw.

  He replied, “That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep.”

  —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

  The Little Prince

  Part One

  SIMON SAYS

  1

  That morning—the first day the game officially started—the ringing of a phone woke me.

  It was a distant, unfamiliar noise that dipped its hand into the dark I’d been floating in and abruptly yanked me out. First I opened my eyes. Then I started to sit up but stopped. My head pounded. It was like a bad hangover only different, making me feel groggy, even shaky.

  I waited a few seconds and then slowly sat up, swung my feet off the bed, and reached for the phone on the bedside table.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello,” said the exasperated voice on the other end. “This is your nine o’clock wake-up call.”

  “My wake-up call,” I said, almost a question, but the person on the other end had already hung up.

  It was then that I realized something was wrong. Normally I sleep on the right side of the bed, Jen on the left side, and here I was now sitting on the left side of the bed holding a phone that shouldn’t be there. After all, we had no phone in our bedroom.

  I blinked and quickly stood up.

  This wasn’t my bedroom. This wasn’t even my house.

  What the hell?

  I was in some kind of motel room. This much was evident by the bed I had just been lying on, completely naked except for my boxers. The air conditioner must have been on high because I was cold, nearly freezing—a fact that came a few seconds later, as I was beginning to catch my bearings. Across from the bed was an old TV, sitting on a four-drawer wooden dresser. The curtains were slightly open, letting in some sunlight. In front of the curtains was a wooden table with an opened bible on top. Beside the bible was a pair of jeans, a plain black T-shirt, white socks, and a black leather belt. Underneath the table on the carpet was a pair of sneakers.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Jen? Casey?”

  No answer.

  I realized I was still holding the phone. I placed it back down on the cradle, feeling a little more awake now but even more confused. Beside the phone was an alarm clock, its digital numbers glowing red. Without my glasses I had to squint to see that it read 9:05.

  I took a step forward and leaned over the table and pushed the curtains aside. I squinted through the window at the parking lot beyond. Stepping back, I glanced down at the bible, noticed that its crusty pages had been opened to the Book of Job.

  “Hello?” I called again.

  Still no answer. The only noise was the air conditioner blowing cold air from the rear of the room, right beside what had to be the bathroom. That door was closed. If my wife or daughter were anywhere, I thought, that was where they would be.

  I started that way, my bare feet digging into the carpet. I hesitated outside the bathroom door, considered knocking, but then just turned the knob and opened the door.

  I reached in, found the light switch, flicked it on.

  There were fluorescents in the ceiling which blinded me, causing me to squint even more and shield my eyes with my hand. I took another step forward, leaving the coolness of the carpet for even colder tiles. The bathroom smelled strongly of chlorine. It was small and compact, with only a toilet, tub and shower, a narrow mirror and sink.

  And on the sink was a pair of glasses. I grabbed them and put them on. They weren’t my glasses, not by a far stretch—they were too heavy, the frames thick, and they pinched around the nose—but they were my prescription. At least now I could see fine, I had that going for me, and even though I knew nobody was behind the shower curtain, I still pulled it aside to find only mildew spotting the tiles and drain.

  That was when I turned and saw what was on the back of the door. Something skipped in my chest. In crude long letters that seemed to run because of the paint, someone had written:

  LET THE GAME BEGIN

  I stared at it for a long time. The fluorescents above me buzzed quietly. My heart pounded in my head. I knew what the letters had been written in—some internal voice kept whispering it—but still I walked forward, slowly, until my face was only inches away. I reached out and hesitantly touched one of the letters before snatching my hand back.

  Just as I’d thought.

  Dried blood.

  2

  The man behind the counter had a scarred face and short hair and looked both alarmed and irritated when I first stormed into the manager’s office. He wore a blue polo shirt with a name tag that said KEVIN, but to me he didn’t look like a Kevin. A beat-up TV sat on the table behind him, its screen fuzzy, its sound turned low, but still I caught glimpses of Matt Lauer doing an interview as I asked the clerk where I was.

  “Are you serious?” he asked, and I recognized his voice at once as the one that had given me my wake-up call. The clock behind him, which continued to tick off the seconds, now read 9:10. “You checked in here last night.”

  “I—I did?”

  Kevin nodded. He reached below the counter and shuffled through some papers, brought out a credit card receipt. He placed it on the counter facing me and pointed down at the scrawled signature. “This is your name, right? I watched you sign it last night.”

  “Last night?”

>   It was then that I noticed a small calendar on the counter. According to it today was Monday. Yesterday I’d been home, with Jen and Casey, sitting in my recliner in the living room and watching football. Hadn’t I?

  “But ...”

  I shook my head, not understanding any of this. I remembered hurrying out of the motel room, spotting the manager’s office and sprinting across the parking lot. I remembered there had been sand on the pavement, the kind of sand we didn’t have in Pennsylvania. Then more images and sounds of the outside came floating back to me. Not just the sand, but tall grass, seagulls, the sound of the ocean. I could even smell it now, could feel the salt in the air.

  “To be honest,” Kevin said, “you looked pretty out of it when you came in. I—well, I thought you might be drunk or something, but I couldn’t smell anything on you. You paid with your credit card and then asked me to give you a nine o’clock wake-up call.”

  And here he slid the credit card receipt even closer, as if begging me to take it.

  I didn’t take it, though. Instead I looked directly back at Kevin and said, “Where am I?”

  Kevin gave me a strange look, realized I didn’t want the receipt, and took it back. Behind him, The Today Show had cut to a commercial.

  “The Paradise Motel,” he said.

  “No, I mean where am I? What”—I swallowed—“what state is this?”

  That strange look still hadn’t left Kevin’s face. When he spoke, his voice had become slow and nervous.

  “California.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s impossible. I—”

  But I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was wearing the clothes I’d found on the table, the clothes that weren’t mine but were my size. Even the sneakers were size eleven and fit just right. The glasses still pinched my nose and I adjusted them quickly, uncertain what else to do. None of this made sense but I knew that it was true, that somehow I was in California—a state I’d never once visited.

  I said, “Where in California?”

  “Sir, are you all right? Do you seriously not remember checking in last night?”

  “Was I by myself?” I’d begun speaking in a clipped tone. “When I checked in. Was there a woman and a little girl with me?”

  “Sir, maybe you should—”

  “Was I alone?”

  Kevin stared back at me, his eyes now wide. I hadn’t meant to shout, but things just weren’t adding up, they weren’t making sense, and right now I didn’t know where my wife and daughter were, they were gone and I wanted them back.

  “Listen,” I said, closing my eyes and placing my hands on the counter. I dropped my head and opened my eyes then, stared at the sneakers that weren’t mine. When I looked back up at Kevin, I could tell I’d scared him. In a slow and soft voice, I said, “Please. Just tell me this one thing. Was I alone?”

  On the table behind the counter, The Today Show had come back, Al Roker now talking to the fans waiting outside the studio.

  Kevin said, “Yes, you were alone. At least from what I could see. You checked in at three o’clock in the morning and you were alone. Now, do you want to sit down or something? You look pale.”

  3

  The Paradise Motel—the place I had presumably checked into late last night—was U-shaped, the bottom part of the U facing toward the ocean, the sides hugging the parking lot. The motel only offered ten rooms and judging by the parking lot, it looked like the majority was empty. There were only three vehicles: a rusted and paint-flaked Dodge, a pickup truck, and a van. All the plates showed they were owned and registered by citizens of California.

  Walking slowly across the sand-spotted pavement, I didn’t know what bothered me more—the fact that my car was nowhere to be seen, or the fact that this was California, that I lived in Pennsylvania, where I knew I’d been just yesterday.

  Smith River, Kevin had told me, just before the state line that would take me into Brookings, Oregon, and did I want a glass of water or a phone to call somebody?

  Actually, yes, I did want to call somebody. I used his phone and dialed Jen’s cell but immediately got her voicemail. I listened to her voice and considered leaving a message, but then hung up. Jen always kept her cell phone on, in case someone at the firm or one of her clients needed to get in touch with her, and the fact that it was turned off just wasn’t right.

  “No luck?” Kevin had asked, and I shook my head, handed him back the phone.

  In the end I didn’t tell him about the dried blood on the back of the bathroom door. After everything I’d learned from him—and really, had I learned anything?—the last thing I wanted to do was mention blood and alarm him even more. I’d managed to play it off like I just didn’t remember checking in last night, that I must have really been exhausted. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. The fact that my wife and daughter were now somehow missing was my foremost thought, but I couldn’t say this to Kevin. He wouldn’t understand. Even I didn’t understand, though I was beginning to wonder if maybe it was me who was missing.

  Kevin had put me in room six. As I hurried across the parking lot, listening to the ocean’s waves off past the dunes, to the seagulls careening through the air, I hoped the door hadn’t somehow locked when I left. If need be I could always return to the manager’s office, ask for a key, but at the moment looking at Kevin—and forcing the poor clerk to look at me in return—was almost too much to bear.

  Stepping onto the walkway, I paused and glanced back toward the highway, what Kevin had said was Highway 101. Probably the most famous highway in California, traveled the length of the state from the top all the way near the bottom, stopped right in Los Angeles. He’d mentioned this as if I should already know it, seeing as how I was obviously familiar with the area (which I most certainly was not), and how I managed to find my way here last night to check in.

  Oh yeah? I thought, glancing at the three vehicles in the lot. And what car did I use?

  For a couple long seconds I watched traffic pass on 101. I was putting off the inevitable, which was to step back into room six and check the bathroom. I kept telling myself what I’d seen wasn’t real, that it had been an illusion. Maybe I was high on something, though I hadn’t smoked since college, that one lonely year I’d been there. Okay, there was that one time after Jen and I had been married, when a friend of ours dropped some off as a surprise, but that was it. The only thing I got high on nowadays were the fumes from painting, but that was on rare occasions, when I was working inside and for some reason the windows needed to be closed or the air wasn’t circulating enough, and I always took a break then, stepped outside.

  What looked to be a delivery truck was approaching down the highway, its turn signal flashing. I thought maybe I’d stay to watch it make the turn, watch it come down the drive and park in front of the office, but I was being stupid. I was stalling.

  I reached for the doorknob, knowing it would be locked. It turned easily in my hand. The next thing I knew the door had swung open, the bright morning sunlight suffusing across the carpet, and I found myself walking inside.

  4

  I checked the bedside table first, yanking open the drawer. Nothing there except a phonebook. I took it out, set it on the bed, and immediately put it back in. Slammed the drawer shut. I wasn’t sure yet what I was looking for but that hadn’t been it.

  The air conditioner unit continued blowing cold air as I rushed over to the bolted-down television. I tried the drawers there, all four of them, but found nothing in any of them, and it wasn’t until then that I realized what I was really doing. Yes, I was looking for my wallet, my keys, even some goddamn cigarettes though I’d given them up years ago, when Casey was born, but the real reason was waiting in the bathroom.

  “Come on,” I whispered, flexing my hands in and out of fists. I stood in front of the now closed bathroom door. I told myself that before I did anything else—like call Jen’s cell again, or call home, or do anything to try to track down my family—I needed to chec
k the bathroom door, to ensure myself I wasn’t going crazy.

  Opening the door, turning on the light, stepping inside—it all happened in one fluid motion that for a second I knew I was dreaming. Yes, that made perfect sense. This was all a dream. This entire thing was just a fantasy concocted by my mind, and at any moment I would wake to Jen nudging me or to that annoying spray of sunlight that fell right on my face when the blinds were up. There would be nothing on the other side of the door now, nothing at all except maybe a freshly folded towel. Having anything else—such as, say, four words spelled out in dried blood—would be a nightmare, and I never had nightmares. Jen and Casey did; I sometimes had to coax each of them out of their dreams when they tossed and turned in the middle of the night, and then had to hold them until they drifted back to sleep.

  I don’t know if I was surprised to find the message still there: those four ominous words, glaring back at me from their place on the door.

  At that moment somebody knocked. I jumped. Stood very still then, thinking that it had been nothing.

  Maybe it’s Jen, I thought (and hoped), but for some reason I knew it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be.

  Before I made my way across the small expanse of the motel room, I made sure to close the bathroom door. My new thought now was that it was Kevin, checking to see if I was really okay, and I didn’t want him to see the blood. Because if he saw what was there he’d become even more alarmed, might even call the police, and then what was I going to tell them? That while Kevin claimed I’d checked in early this morning, the last thing I remembered was being at home with my wife and daughter and watching the Eagles game?