Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  I crouched down next to Simon, who grinned back at me. His chuckling died in his throat, had become coughing instead. I pointed the gun at his face.

  “Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  I jammed the gun into his eye. “Where are they?”

  “Have you”—cough—“decided”—cough—“which one”—cough—“you love more?”

  Silent, I kept the gun jammed right into his eye.

  Simon coughed again. “Then how about”—cough—“the very last thing”—cough—“you’d say to them?”

  I took the gun from his eye, pressed it against his shoulder blade, and pulled the trigger.

  He didn’t scream. He barely even reacted. But he was in definite pain; I could at least see that from his eyes despite him trying to hide it.

  After opening and closing his mouth several times, he managed to say, “Finally”—cough—“you grew”—cough—“some balls.”

  “Where. Are. They.”

  His eyes shifted from me for just a moment, shifted from me to glance at something across the parking lot.

  “You fucked yourself, Ben,” he said, and coughed some more. “You should have stuck”—cough—“to the plan. Carver’s son”—cough—“arrived early, but ...” And he slowly shook his head, grinning at me with a mouth full of blood.

  “You told me they were here the entire time.”

  “I”—cough—“lied.”

  I glanced behind me. Carver still sat with his son. In his arms the child was nothing more than a bloodied mess. Ronny knelt beside him, trying to talk to him, but Carver wasn’t listening. David had started over to where I was crouched with Simon. He carried his rifle again.

  I said to him, “Can you go check the rest of the rooms?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re”—cough—“a day early.” Simon started to speak but had to stop, had to cough up even more blood. “How?”

  “Misdirection,” I said, glancing once more over my shoulder. David had whispered something to Ronny and they had split up, both now carrying their rifles at the ready, David crossing the parking lot to check the rooms on that side, Ronny checking the rooms on this side. Carver had set his son on the ground, very gently, and was now getting to his feet. Looking back at Simon, I said, “The public falls for it every time.”

  The grin appeared again on Simon’s face. “The public”—cough, cough—“is stupid.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to agree or disagree with him. I didn’t want to tell him anything else, either. He didn’t need to know about how in Cheyenne, at the gas station, when I stepped into the darkness of the restroom, I wasn’t alone. That the Kid was waiting in there too. That in the five seconds or so of darkness I handed over my glasses and he punched the lenses out so he could see. And then the lights were flicked on and he took a piss, washed his hands, making sure not to look once at the mirror. Then it was back in the sedan, where not Carver joined him minutes later but Drew. Both were dressed in the same kind of clothes Carver and I had been wearing when we first started. They pulled away, got back onto the highway, neither saying anything to each other, the Kid not once looking at the rearview mirror or anything else which would give away his reflection. And Carver and I went to the airport, got on a private jet the Kid had paid an arm and a leg to secure for us, and we flew the entire way to California, where Ronny and David and Bronson were waiting to drive us up the coast.

  Carver stood behind me. He said nothing for the longest time. Then, in a voice that didn’t quite sound like his, he asked for the gun.

  “Wait,” Simon said, coughing up more blood. His entire front was covered in it. His time with Carver was apparently over, and now his attention was focused on me. “Why”—cough—“painting?”

  For a moment I was taken back to the time when I was six years old and watching my father paint the backdoor. Standing there and asking him why he always painted. And my father taking a moment and resting on his hunches, wiping the sweat from his face, taking a deep breath. Telling me that every time he painted something old, made it look new, it was like he was helping fix the world. Just, he said, helping fix the world one brushstroke at a time. He had asked me then if I wanted to help and I’d nodded enthusiastically, saying yes, and he’d smiled and handed me the paintbrush and pointed to a spot near the bottom. And I’d painted it, had painted it clean. I never mentioned that moment to my father, not even when he was on his deathbed, because as time wore on and I got older and understood the world a little better, I realized that the old stuff, the nasty stuff, would always be there, right underneath the surface, and no matter how many times you painted it, all of that stuff would still be there. Yet at the same time I suspected my father knew this too. He understood it but didn’t care.

  But I wasn’t going to tell Simon this. It was none of his business, and besides, I had more important things on my mind.

  I jammed the gun back into his eye and said, my teeth clenched, “Where is my family?”

  Simon smiled, blood between his teeth. “Gone”—cough—“like the”—cough—“wind.”

  Carver asked for the gun again. I continued to ignore him, keeping the gun where it was.

  “Who are you anyway?”

  Simon’s grin grew even larger, rivulets of blood streaming from the corners of his mouth. “My name”—cough—“is Benjamin Anderson.” His eyes shifted up to Carver. “My name”—cough, cough—“is Carver Ellison.”

  Carver leaned down. He took the gun from my hand. I glanced up at him, wondering just what the hell he thought he was doing, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead he was staring back down at Simon.

  “Who is Caesar?” Around us the waves crashed, the seagulls squawked, the traffic continued. Ronny and David continued searching the motel, testing knobs, kicking in doors, their rifles raised, checking every space of every room. “Tell me who he is and I might let you live.”

  Simon grinned again, even more blood in his mouth. He said, “Give unto Caesar”—cough, cough—“what is Caesar’s.”

  “Yeah?” Carver said, nodding slowly. He cocked the gun and aimed it back at Simon’s head. “When I finally meet him, I’ll give him this too.”

  And he shot Simon in the face.

  59

  Carver dropped the gun and turned away. After a while I stood up and turned away too. Carver had gone to kneel next to his son again. Simon could have been bluffing but I didn’t suspect so, not in this case. This was something that Simon had been planning for a long time, his own form of entertainment. After all, sometimes the audience doesn’t need to be a huge number of people, but just one. Sometimes one is all it takes.

  Across the parking lot, up on the walkway by room seven, David kicked in the door. He started to enter but stopped, turned back. He shouted at us to come over there.

  I was moving before I even realized it. I sprinted past Carver, past the van parked in front of the room, up the steps and onto the porch. David stepped in front of me, held me back with both hands.

  “Whoa,” he said. “I’m not—I’m not sure you want to see this.”

  I tried pushing him away but he kept holding on, his fingers digging into my shoulders. “Get the fuck off me,” I said, and David stared back at me, shaking his head, now whispering, “Ben, you don’t—”

  “Let him go.”

  This was Carver, quickly approaching from behind. Ronny was with him. David held onto me for a second longer, then let go. I pushed past him into the room seven, the room right next to the one I’d woken up in a week ago.

  I stopped at once.

  The room had been cleared. No bed. No table. No chair or dresser. Just two wooden caskets on the floor, looking like something out of a western. On one of the caskets was printed WIFE OF WAX. On the other casket, DAUGHTER OF WAX.

  “Jesus God,” someone breathed behind me. I never found out whether it was Ronny or David. I know it wasn’t Carver, because Carver had come up beside me, his rifle
in his hands.

  “Ben?”

  I didn’t answer. I just continued staring. I thought about the question Simon had been asking me all week, who I loved more, Jen or Casey. And now here I was, standing here with a decision to make, a choice between my wife and my daughter.

  “Ben?” Carver said again, and I started shaking my head, still staring down at the caskets, at the words printed there.

  I whispered, “I ... can’t.”

  Carver must have motioned something to Ronny and David because seconds later the two men entered the room, walking past us toward the caskets. Ronny went to the casket on the left, the one with WIFE OF WAX printed on top, while David went to the casket on the right, marked DAUGHTER OF WAX. They bent down and inspected the outside of the caskets, before standing back up.

  “This one doesn’t look like it’s wired to anything,” David said.

  Ronny nodded. “Same here.”

  A moment passed. Carver said my name again. I just continued shaking my head, continued staring.

  Carver said, “Okay, guys, we’re going open them up.”

  Ronny and David glanced at each other, then bent over the caskets, worked their fingers under the lids.

  “On three,” Carver said.

  They looked up at him, waiting.

  Carver opened his mouth but paused, glancing at me once again. “Fuck it,” he said under his breath. Then to his men, “Just do it now.”

  As one, they lifted the lids of the caskets.

  60

  Except if you were one of the hundreds or thousands of viewers watching this particular game, you wouldn’t have seen any of that. All you would have seen was the passing deserts and distant peaks and sagebrush of Nevada. Signs for Carlin, for Battle Mountain, for Golconda.

  In fact, no doubt almost all of you were somewhere else at that time. Playing with your children. Counseling your employees. Teaching your students. Speaking to a board of investors. Prepping yourself for surgery. Any number of things.

  You had the time figured out, knew how long it would take before the Man of Wax and the Man of Honor reached their destination. Only then would you slip away from the world you’ve lived in all your life, smiling and saying the right things at the right times to the right people—only then would you take off your mask and go to your computers. You had been anticipating this moment, had been dreaming about it.

  Only you found that, at the appropriate time, the page was gone. Completely blank. Surely this must be some kind of mistake, some technical error. You made calls, you sent emails, you tried finding out what had happened, but you got no answers.

  A few may had guessed it already, though. A few who had nothing better to do with their time and just watched the highway along with the Man of Wax. Sitting on their couches or in their desk chairs, drinking coffee or sipping beer, lounging in their underwear and sometimes masturbating if the mood hit them just right. These few would have been the only witnesses to what happened at the end. How the car made another pit stop off of 80 in Fernley, Nevada. But the pit stop was not at some gas station or fast food restaurant, but just some random parking lot. Maybe those few watching noticed this right away and sat up a little straighter in their chairs. Maybe they kept their eyes glued when the glasses were taken off what was presumably the Man of Wax’s face. Maybe they watched as the glasses were held up and a hand appeared in front of the camera, a hand that proudly flipped all who was watching the bird. Then the bird and the hand disappeared and the glasses were snapped in half, breaking the transmitter.

  Maybe—and here’s where we really have to hope—they even had the volume turned up on their speakers and could clearly hear the Kid’s voice right before the screen cut to black.

  “Game over, motherfuckers.”

  EPILOGUE

  It’s been four weeks since that first morning, the morning the game officially started. It’s been three weeks since our little raid at the Paradise Motel. Three weeks since I stood in that room and watched them open the caskets.

  They were empty, both of them. For the longest time nobody said a word. Then I broke down, fell to my knees and just started crying.

  Eventually I got myself together. I wiped at my eyes, sniffed back more tears. Stared down into each casket, then glanced up at Carver, who hadn’t left the room yet, unlike David and Ronny who went to gather all the computer equipment to later give to the Kid.

  I said, “What does this mean?”

  Carver stared down at the caskets. “It means they’re still alive.”

  “But how ... how do you know?”

  “I don’t,” Carver said. His eyes shifted to meet mine. “Neither do you. But like you told me in Chicago, we can’t give up that hope. It ... it’s the only thing they can’t take away from us.”

  When interrogated the girl gave us nothing, not even her name. It seemed the act she’d pulled with Carver before was just an act. She’d been scared, maybe, but she’d just woken up and couldn’t think straight. She refused to tell us anything, especially who Caesar was. In the end Carver broke her neck and left her dead body next to Kevin’s.

  We debated about calling the police, the media, even taking some pictures, but decided none of it would matter in the end. Besides Bronson and Carver’s son, we left the rest of the bodies to be cleaned up by someone else. In the manager’s office Carver wrote a note on Paradise Motel stationary that said, Caesar, I’m coming for you. He tacked the piece of paper to Simon’s bloodied chest.

  So we left the Paradise Motel. With Bronson and Carver’s son wrapped in the motel’s white sheets in the back of the van, we drove and we drove and we drove. Eventually we came to the place Carver and his men sometimes stayed. First we buried Bronson in the backyard. Then Carver asked the rest of us to leave him alone for a while. We went into the house to give him his privacy, but still I watched him from the second floor. I watched him bury his son all by himself. I watched him say a prayer. Then I watched him break down crying.

  Drew Price—who’d been standing in for Carver—showed up later that day. The Kid never did show up. He went back to his basement decorated with posters of Terry Gilliam films and continued his work. Fighting the good fight, he’s told me over the phone, but I’m not so sure anymore.

  Two days later the Kid informed me that my house back in Lanton had burned down. I’d wanted to return to it at some point and take whatever I could that would forever remind me of my family—Jen’s quilt she’d knitted one year, Casey’s worn copy of The Little Prince or her Shrek 2 poster—but now there was no point. The house’s demise, the Kid said, was reportedly from an electrical fire, which killed the family living inside. Where the bodies came from and how they managed to pass as us I’ll never know. But for those who cared, Benjamin Anderson, his wife Jennifer, and their daughter Casey were dead.

  To add insult to injury, Lanton had recently lost another painter. My old friend, Marshall Gibson, and his wife Lydia, died in a car accident Tuesday evening one week before. The same Tuesday I was busy driving through Nevada.

  The only good news the Kid could provide was that Casey’s preschool was still standing.

  After hearing all of this news I had gone outside to be alone. Eventually Carver came out and sat down beside me. He didn’t speak. Finally I cleared my throat and asked the question I’d been holding back.

  “Just how deep does this go?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You told me back in Chicago this wasn’t some conspiracy. That it was just a bunch of people having a good time. But now with Caesar? And about how this guy is going to soon change the world?”

  For the longest time Carver didn’t say anything. Then he looked at me, took a deep breath, and said, “I have no idea.”

  The next day Carver had a black eye.

  “Who gave you that?” I asked.

  “Drew. I can’t say I blame him. I deserve it. I’ve already talked with the rest of the guys and now I need to talk to you. I
’ve been putting it off long enough.”

  “About what?”

  “How I owe you an apology. I ... I wasn’t completely honest with you—with any of you.”

  “Ronny told me none of you keep secrets from each other.”

  “I’m not proud of what I did. Simon ... he just kept taunting me with the idea that my son was still alive. I never even knew for certain that he was. But I wanted to believe it so badly that it became true to me, and I decided I would do whatever it took to get him back.”

  “And now he’s dead,” I murmured, and instantly hated myself for saying it.

  Carver stared hard at me, his eyes cold, before he nodded slowly and whispered, “Yes, he is.”

  There was a long silence, and then Carver asked me if I wanted to stay with him. He said he couldn’t promise me anything, but he would try his best to help me find my wife and daughter.

  “But what if they’re already dead?”

  “Do you believe they are?”

  I said nothing for the longest time. Then I told Carver I might as well stay with him and his men because it didn’t look like I had any choice. He said that wasn’t true, we always had a choice, and right then I had an idea. Carver wanted to get me trained but I told him there was something I needed to do first. I explained my idea, then we talked to the Kid via Skype to get his opinion.

  “Might work, might not,” the Kid said. “I mean, if he wants to do it, I’ll post it wherever I can. What the fuck.”

  Yes, what the fuck.

  I’ve been writing for six days straight now. Only stepping away to eat or move my bowels or sleep. But I don’t like sleeping, because I toss and turn too much. I keep thinking of where Jen and Casey might be right now, how scared and confused they must feel. It’s been hell to relive that particular week of my life but I figured I had no choice. This story needs to be told, needs to be posted wherever it can be posted across the Internet.