Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  The gun Carver handed me was a nine-millimeter. He’d checked the magazine, told me there were five bullets left, and that if I wanted to shoot something, I better make sure I had a safe place to take cover.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” I said, though the word was simple and small and I think it was lost behind a sudden wail of more gunfire.

  “Make sure the safety’s off,” Carver told me, and when I stared down at the gun, he reached out and flicked something on the side.

  Then he hefted the rifle and turned and we started down the hallway.

  • • •

  BACK THE WAY we came less than a half hour ago, the mansion had transformed itself in a very bad way. Some of the bare walls were now marked with bullet holes. Bits of glass and mirror and plaster covered the wooden floors. We passed a body wearing all black. His eyes closed, his mouth open, blood coming from his chest.

  Carver stepped over him like he wasn’t even there.

  A few seconds passed without any gunfire and for some reason this felt wrong. Carver sensed it too. He stopped his slow and steady pace and then just stood there, listening.

  Silence.

  “Does that—” I started to say, whisper really, but Carver snapped his head back, gave me a glare which caused me to shut up at once.

  We listened.

  More silence.

  We started forward again. I tried to keep my gun aimed to the side, so it wasn’t pointed at Carver’s back, but it was difficult. I had to keep reminding myself that this one was full of live ammunition.

  We rounded a corner. More bullet holes in the walls, more plaster on the floor. Carver did a good job of keeping his footsteps silent. I tried my best to follow his example but found it even more difficult than keeping the gun away from his back.

  Then we came to two more bodies, both lying supine just outside an opened door.

  Carver stepped over them just like before, like they weren’t even there, and aimed his rifle into the darkness of the room. He stood there for a moment, then continued on. I tried to do the same but I couldn’t take my gaze away from the motionless bodies and the darkness of the blood.

  Footsteps sounded out ahead of us, rough and heavy footsteps, and I jerked my head up. Carver had stopped, was aiming the rifle down the hallway. A figure appeared around the corner and then halted, bringing up a gun, and there was a tense moment when I was certain another cacophony of gunfire would start up. But then I recognized the large bearded man as Ronny Kersic and released a small breath.

  “Anything?” Carver whispered.

  Ronny shook his head. He raised one gloved finger and mouthed the words One more.

  “Where?”

  I felt the gun even before the hand gripped my shoulder. Then all at once I was jerked back and an arm wrapped against my neck and I could feel his body behind me. With a heavy voice he shouted, “I’ll blow his fucking brains out.”

  Carver spun, raising his rifle. Ronny, maybe fifteen yards behind him, slowly started forward, his rifle raised and aimed too. Aimed right at me.

  “I mean it,” said the man holding me as a shield. “I’ll kill him. Don’t fucking move.”

  Carver took another step forward and then stopped. He was maybe ten yards away, maybe eight. Ronny stopped as well. Neither of them lowered their weapons.

  The nine-millimeter was still in my hands but my hands had become stone. I could neither move them nor my body. My eyes were wide, my mouth was open, yet I couldn’t seem to make a sound.

  “But he’s the star of the game,” Carver said.

  “Game’s over,” the man said. “This bullshit’s gone far enough. They don’t care about him”—the gun jabbed the back of my head—“they don’t care about anybody else. It’s you, Carver. They want you taken alive. So drop your weapons.”

  Carver said, “How about you go fuck yourself instead?”

  “You’re making a big mistake,” the man said. Then to me, “Drop the gun.”

  But I couldn’t drop the gun; my hands were still stone.

  “Drop it,” the man said, jabbing his gun harder against my head, and I dropped it at once. Shame hit me a second later and I cursed myself for doing such a stupid thing.

  “The game’s not over,” Carver said. He hadn’t moved and was still keeping the rifle aimed. I found myself staring at the dark hole of the barrel, wondering if I would be able to actually see the bullet when it was shot. That was me right then: Benjamin Anderson with a gun to his head, not thinking about his wife or daughter, but rather if he’d catch a glimpse of the bullet before it smashed into his face. “The game’s never over.”

  “It is now,” the man said.

  “No,” said a new voice, this one coming somewhere behind us, “it isn’t.”

  Another deafening gunshot, so loud that I could actually feel my ears beginning to bleed. The solid presence of the body close against mine slipped away. The arm around my neck loosened. I took in a deep breath, then another, and started scrambling forward. I tripped over my own feet and hit the floor and rolled over. For some reason I expected the man to still be standing there but he had already dropped to the floor. The place where his head had once been was now a mess. Blood was everywhere, splattered on the floor and the bare wall. Behind him stood David Resh, who had taken his gun and placed it right to the side of the man’s head and pulled the trigger.

  My ears continued ringing. Something was heavy in the air, something I’d only later learn was cordite, as well as the dead man’s piss. My body continued to shake. I spotted the gun I’d dropped and tried reaching for it but found that I was shaking too badly.

  A hand fell on my shoulder.

  I jumped, may have even cried out.

  Carver’s voice, faint through the ringing in my ears: “Let’s move.”

  I just sat there, staring at the dead man, at all the blood, and did everything I could not to cry.

  52

  The foyer where Olivia Kemp offered us coffee or something else to drink was a mess. More glass and plaster—and even some blood—marked the wooden floor and bare walls than in the hallways, which made me think this was where the gunfire had originated. The heavy oak door stood open, letting in the wind. Bronson Lam stood over another dead body, waiting for us.

  “Where’s the old woman?” Carver asked.

  Bronson shook his head. “We lost her.”

  “Fuck.”

  Carver turned and glanced back at us—Ronny walking in front, me in the middle, and David bringing up the rear. The nine-millimeter was back in my hands but my hands were still shaking.

  “Somebody’s coming,” Ronny said loudly, raising his rifle, but Bronson told him to stand down, that it was Drew. The man was hustling up the drive, up onto the porch, and stepped inside. He was breathing heavily, his cheeks flushed, shaking his head.

  Carver said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Larry,” Drew managed. “He’s—he’s dead.”

  A large piece of plaster lay on the floor close by Carver and he kicked it at the wall, shouting, “Goddamn it!”

  Nobody else said anything. The wind beyond the door continued to howl.

  “We have to leave,” Carver said. The rifle hung on a strap over his shoulder. He had his hands on his hips and was staring down at the floor. “We probably woke up the goddamned neighborhood and we can’t wait for the police.”

  We stood in a circle around the one dead body. It felt strange, watching these men talk and act this way while before they’d been truck drivers, bartenders, drug dealers, plumbers. They’d never been in the army, had never been officially trained for this kind of action, but Carver had done a good job, had made sure they knew all they needed to know to survive the game.

  And coming here tonight they knew it would be a trap, that Simon would send his men. That had been the idea, after all, to let Simon’s men come. That’s why before Carver took Olivia Kemp and left me with Howard Abele he made it sound like only Ronny was coming
in for backup, to make Simon and his men and all the viewers believe our numbers were small. Which they were—our numbers were very small—but Carver’s men had waited out beyond the perimeter for Simon’s men to show up, had gotten a number of how many there were, and then, as Simon’s soldiers raided the mansion, Carver’s soldiers came at them from behind.

  Ronny asked, “What about the woman?”

  “Fuck the woman,” Carver said. “David, did you get the hard drives?”

  David nodded.

  “Then we got what we came for. Let’s go.”

  As one solid group they turned and started toward the door. I was the only one that didn’t move.

  “Ben,” Carver said to me, turning back, “what the hell are you doing?”

  “I can’t leave yet. I need to finish this.”

  “It’s too late. We don’t have time.”

  “Then you can go on without me.”

  “Fuck,” Carver said again. Had there been another large piece of plaster around he no doubt would have kicked it. He turned back to his men and told them to get the car and SUV ready, that they were leaving in five minutes. Then he walked back toward me. “Three minutes, that’s it. Is that going to be enough time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tough. That’s all you’re getting. And if you don’t kill the motherfucker, I will.”

  As much as I wanted to be able to clearly see what happened next, I didn’t want anyone else to see, so I took off my glasses and set them on the table beside the stairs. Next I ran down the hallway, squinting so I wouldn’t slip on shards of glass or trip over any dead bodies. Carver stayed close behind me, the rifle no longer strapped over his shoulder but back in his hands. He wasn’t taking any chances, and I could tell he was pissed that I was drawing this out.

  But I couldn’t help myself. I needed to put closure on this for my own sake, if not for Jen and Casey’s.

  We came to the room where Howard Abele had been watching me for the past five days, where he’d probably been watching me and my family for the past three years. Everything we’d done, every happy moment, every sad moment, every moment where only a look passed between us and nothing more, had been on camera, had maybe even been recorded so Howard Abele could go back and rewatch his favorite parts.

  It was especially fun watching you ... I always liked watching you.

  My hand was on the knob and I was already opening the door before I got the feeling that something wasn’t right. But then the door opened and the shooting started and I hit the ground again—but this time it wasn’t fast enough. This time one of the bullets got me right in the arm and pain exploded all over my body.

  Carver fired immediately. I was crumpled on the ground, my left hand gripping my right shoulder, feeling the warmth of my own blood. I was sure that I was going to die, that I was going to lose so much blood and pass out, that with my right arm still gripping the gun I raised it and just started firing. This gun felt different than the revolver but my mind couldn’t make the correlation why until there were no more bullets and I was still pulling the trigger and asking myself why nothing was happening.

  The gunfire had stopped, both mine and Carver’s and Olivia Kemp’s. She’d been in the room with Howard Abele when I opened the door, standing close to his bed with a gun, and when she heard me she turned and started shooting. Carver took her down at once, her body jerking from the rain of bullets, and then she was on the floor, a lifeless crumpled doll oozing blood.

  Carver bent and started inspecting my wound. My ears were still ringing, the pain was still exploding throughout my body, yet beyond all this I could hear the howling wind. The howling wind and Howard Abele, chuckling away from his place on the bed.

  “It’s fine,” Carver said. “You’re lucky. It just grazed the skin. Nothing like this.”

  He raised his right arm to show the blood coming out of the space just beside his chest.

  “Shit,” I said, jumping to my feet. Now that I’d had it confirmed I wasn’t going to die from lack of blood, the pain had quickly dissipated. It stung like hell but I knew I would live and that was good enough. “Are you—”

  Carver shook his head. “The bullet’s not in there. But I need to get this wrapped. Do what you need to do and do it fast.” He stared at me for the longest moment, relaying the simple fact that what had just happened here was all my fault, and while we both knew it he wasn’t going to hold it against me. He took the gun from my hand, ejected the magazine, loaded a new one, handed it back to me and said, “You’ve now got two minutes.”

  He started back down the hallway. I watched him, listening to the wind and Howard Abele and my own mind telling me to just follow Carver and get wrapped up too, that I didn’t need all this shit.

  Instead I turned and entered the room. Closed the door behind me. Howard Abele was still chuckling as I approached.

  “Very well played before,” he said, shouting so his raspy voice could be heard over the wind. “But I’m guessing there are live bullets in that one. Are you going to kill me for real this time?”

  The revolver had been full of blanks. I had no idea what Simon had expected me to do with it, but for some reason I hadn’t been surprised when Ronny told me. Just like I told Howard Abele, what really happened didn’t matter, just as long as the audience believed it did.

  Now it was different. Now there was no audience, was just the two of us. Now what happened really did matter.

  When I’d initially fired the revolver, I had tilted my head at the last moment as well as my hand so the flame and muzzle flash and residue from the discharge didn’t blind the old man. Not that I didn’t care to blind him, but I always knew I was coming back here, and I wanted to make sure he could still see when I did.

  “I told you before,” Howard Abele said as I stepped up next to his bed, “you’re not going to shoot me.”

  “No?” I placed the barrel of the gun against his right kneecap. “Then what do you call this?”

  I pulled the trigger.

  The scream that emitted from Howard Abele’s mouth was almost too satisfying. He writhed around on the bed, his face scrunched up in pain, trying to reach for what was left of his knee. My mind kept telling me to stop, that I didn’t want to become this person, and I kept telling my mind to shut the fuck up.

  “They amputated your own daughter’s finger,” I said. “God only knows what else they’ve done to her. Not to mention what they’ve done to your granddaughter.”

  I leaned over and placed the barrel of the gun against his left kneecap.

  “Beg me to stop, Howard. Beg me to stop like Jen begged them to stop.”

  “Stop,” he said, or may have said through his pain—it was difficult to hear his voice over the wind and the machines beeping their rhythmic and innocuous noise and a new sound that should have been familiar but for some reason wasn’t.

  I waited another moment, just watching his face, and then pulled the trigger again.

  More screaming, more writhing on the bed, and still that new sound persisted, and after a few seconds I realized what it was.

  A cordless phone lay on the table on the other side of Howard Abele’s bed. It kept ringing, and I knew who was calling and I didn’t want to speak to him but still I walked around the bed and picked up the phone, punched the talk button and placed the phone to my ear.

  Simon said, “I figured you would come back to see Mr. Abele. It took me a moment to understand why you ditched the glasses, but then I remembered—there were only blanks in that gun. I’m actually surprised you figured it out. I’m guessing you came back now to finish the job?”

  “I am finishing the job,” I said. “I’m doing to him exactly what you did to my family.”

  “Your family—”

  I disconnected the call, dropped the phone to the floor beside me.

  “Do you want to play a game?” I asked the old man. “It will be fun.”

  He didn’t answer me, still thrashing around in pain.


  “Oh wait, that’s right,” I said, now turning away from him and stepping over Olivia Kemp’s body to inspect the machines surrounding his bed. “It’s not up to you whether or not you want to play the game. I’m the viewer, after all. It’s my decision and I want to be entertained.”

  I followed the cords and found the one with the tube connected to it, the tube that was feeding Howard Abele his much needed oxygen. I started to reach for it but then something else caught my eye. A power strip on the floor, its little protection indicator light glowing red, all the outlets used up to keep these machines running.

  The cordless phone I’d dropped on the floor started ringing again.

  I ignored it and grabbed the power strip’s plug and then thought better of it, decided instead to press the red button glowing on the strip itself. The moment I hit it the red glow went dark and the machines stopped beeping.

  “Here’s the object of the game,” I said, leaning close to Howard Abele so he could hear me. He was still crying and I had to slap his face a few times to get his attention. “It’s simple really, something anyone can do. Just press that button again so the machines start back up and keep what’s left of you alive. You do that and you win. You don’t and—well, you’re a smart guy. You know the nature of the beast, so to speak. I’m sure you can figure out how this system works.”

  Howard Abele didn’t seem to hear me, instead focused on all the pain streaking through his body.

  The phone continued ringing from its place on the floor. I stepped away from Howard Abele’s bed and picked it up.

  The first thing Simon said to me was, “Don’t you want to save your family anymore?”

  “My family’s already dead.” I walked to the door and turned around, just watched the old man twisting around on his bed. “The game’s over.”

  “No, Ben, your family isn’t dead. And the game most certainly isn’t over. One last part and then it will be.”

  “Are you telling me this? More Simon Says bullshit?”