That scenario meant thirty more years of Tyler languishing in prison. But his brother would only be there half the time. He’d be paroled to see the world through Brian’s eyes whenever Tyler slept. Even worse, there’d be thirty years of Brian forced to live the hell-on-Earth experience of Tyler’s incarceration every time Brian went to sleep. Decades of nightly punishment for his brother’s crimes.
Unless Brian went back on his medication schedule, and let the pharma break the link to his brother. But he’d come too far, experienced too much, felt too free, to snap those shackles back on.
No. His brother had spawned too much evil already, ruined too many lives. The legal system would only slow the rate at which Tyler poisoned the world. Instead, that flow just needed to end.
Brian decided he’d solve this problem on his own.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Two months later.
Tracking his brother had been easier than he’d thought, and it made Brian realize what a helpless target he’d been in Tyler’s psychic sights.
But before Brian had even started, he’d taken steps to protect himself. A move to day shift at Orange Star Trucking meant Brian could adjust his sleep schedule to the opposite of the one Tyler favored. He awoke when Tyler went to sleep, usually about 2:00 a.m., so any connections Tyler might have would be the boring routine of Brian puttering in his apartment in the wee hours, or his repetitive morning routine at the start of the workday. Brian double-checked everything he did during those hours to ensure that Tyler, if he was tuning in, would see nothing suspicious.
Going to bed ridiculously early meant that he slept through Tyler’s prime waking hours, the evening and night. When he awoke, he’d write down all that he’d seen, every street sign, every person, every activity. A comprehensive understanding of his brother’s life soon took shape. Tyler lived in the Lamplighter Motel, a one-story, L-shaped dive so old its original name included the words ‘motor court’. It sat on Highway 41 north of the little burg of Moultrie, and near several other small towns. Tyler made ends meet through a combination of low-end burglary and an ascetic lifestyle. The good news was, he hadn’t killed again.
The bad news was, he wanted to. During each mental connection, Brian felt Tyler’s sickening desire, his rising hunger for the rush of the hunt and the orgasmic release of the kill. When Brian tuned in one night to Tyler staking out a women’s gym from the front seat of his car, he knew he’d run out of time. He had to act.
Brian headed to Moultrie that Friday night after work, a long drive he made during Tyler’s usual waking hours. Once he arrived at the Lamplighter, he parked a bit down the road at a convenience store. A large coffee combined with a mix of over-the-counter stimulants pumped him up. For the next day or two, he might not sleep, but afterwards, he was certain he’d spend the rest of his life sleeping like a baby.
He caught his first sight of Tyler midday as his brother left his rented room for the Lamplighter’s weed-choked parking lot. Tyler had shaved his head and grew a moustache and goatee. He sported dark glasses, though the day didn’t demand it. He wore jeans, boots, and a faded T-shirt, an ensemble apparently designed for blending into a relatively redneck crowd. Tyler made his familiar right-foot-drag-walk across the lot to an older model pickup with Georgia tags.
Brian’s heart pounded. His left foot throbbed, as if it were shrieking at the bastard that had permanently damaged it. Anger surged through him, and he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
He could finish this now. Fire up the car, blast across the street and catch Tyler before he made it to the truck. Brian imagined the shocked, horrified look on Tyler’s face as he stared through the approaching windshield and recognized Brian at the wheel. Brian relished the potential surge of satisfaction of plowing Tyler under the front bumper of his car, then the gratifying crunch of Tyler’s rib cage after backing the rear tires over the killer to finish him off.
But that would be too quick, it would be too messy, and it would lack the kind of justice Brian’s true plan would deliver.
Hours later, after night fell, Brian pulled on a pair of latex gloves. They made a sharp snap when he released the ends, gave his skin a tingle. Anxiety’s familiar upwell began to swirl in the pit of his stomach. In the next few hours, a hundred, no, a thousand things could go wrong. Random police patrols, stray dogs, the desk clerk might actually look out a window and see Brian approaching.
But his worst fear was that he’d lose his nerve. That somewhere between his first step out of the car and the last milliseconds of his brother’s poisoned existence, Brian would quit. Sweat beaded between his palm and the glove. His right leg began to jiggle.
He punched his dashboard in frustration. He forced back the anxiety like swallowing bad food. His emotional reactions would have their place later. Now it was time to finish what he’d started. More accurately, to finish what his brother had started.
It was time for revenge.
Brian turned his brother’s meticulous planning for worst-case scenarios against him. Tyler had prepped the bathroom window in his room for a quick escape, removing the latch, oiling the runners, and placing a crate outside underneath as a step during a potential emergency exit. Brian’s plan was to reverse the path, and use the exit for egress.
He left the car and snuck around to the rear of the hotel in the darkness. He crept under the bathroom window to Tyler’s unit and waited. Silence reigned inside, as it did from the rooms on either side. He stepped onto the crate, slid the window up, and slipped inside.
A light at the base of a cheap wall-mounted hair dryer gave the bathroom more illumination than Brian needed, or wanted. The stained, rusting collection of shopworn ceramic lived down to all his expectations. He wondered if someone would actually be cleaner after washing there. He stepped into Tyler’s room.
The view of the room flashed Brian back to his first post-captivity connection with Tyler. The dingy room looked no better in color than in his first black-and-white vision. Same curling wallpaper. Same threadbare bedding. But now he had the added pleasure of sampling the room’s stale, mildew-tinged scent. There was something to be said for his visions restricting themselves to a limited visual medium.
He had his plan. He had everything he needed stuffed in the cargo pockets of his pants. He stepped inside the closet and closed the door. The view through the louvered slats perfectly framed the desk, chair and window.
Brian leaned back against the wall and waited.
Chapter Sixty
Seconds before Tyler entered the room, Brian felt him. That familiar, churning mix of anger and frustration was practically Tyler’s emotional fingerprint. Brian had experienced it first-hand for days, then remotely for months. While a prisoner in the Palm Bay Preserve bathroom, sensing Tyler’s impending arrival had stoked debilitating fear. Now, it spurred joyful anticipation.
Tyler entered the room and turned on the lights. They were dim, but after waiting in the dark, even the low light passing through the closet door louvers made Brian squint. His eyes soon adjusted. Tyler crossed the room with his signature right-foot drag, a bit more pronounced than Brian remembered.
A bit worse for the wear, Brian thought. Tough break, asshole.
Tyler tossed a wrinkled paper shopping bag on the bed. It landed sideways and an assortment of smartphones and jewelry skidded out across the ratty bedspread. Tyler plopped down at the desk, back to Brian, and opened his laptop.
Tyler began to flip through screens as he surfed the internet. Brian couldn’t see what he was doing, but whatever it was didn’t matter. It was time to get the show started.
Brian pulled his phone out of his pocket. He scrolled down to a waiting message, pressed Send, and returned the phone to his pocket. With two fingers, he eased the closet door open.
A few seconds later, Tyler’s phone beeped. He gave it a confused look, as if he hadn’t heard the no
ise before. Brian thought that could indeed be true. Tyler probably hadn’t gotten a text message until now. Who would he be texting with?
Tyler checked the message. His spine snapped straight. He dropped the phone back on the desk.
Now Tyler radiated one overwhelming emotion. Distress. Brian smiled as he thought about the text message replaying through Tyler’s mind.
Prepare to see life from both sides. Receive instead of giving with the Better Relationship Institute.
“B. R. I.,” Brian whispered to himself. “Bri. I see you get it, jackass.”
Tyler nearly sent his laptop flying as he jumped to his feet, leaned over the desk and yanked the curtains apart. His eyes swept the dark, vacant parking lot and the empty street beyond. Tyler’s surging paranoia now flowed to Brian through the empathic connection.
Then Brian summoned his anxiety, the debilitating, nerve-frying, mind-scrambling panic he’d fought all his life. The unwelcome friend he’d fought back as he left his car for this encounter now had an engraved invitation. He remembered multiple childhood incidents where the emotion had swelled to fill his whole world. His pulse soared. His nerves tingled. Sweat formed on his gloved palms.
He took all that passionate panic and did what brothers are supposed to do.
He shared.
Months ago in the garage, Brian had been able to imprint Tyler with a hint of his own psychological issues, little more than the spray from the waves of angst that pounded Brian’s mental shores. Now Brian was stronger, his mind clearer, his resolve focused by months of plotting this revenge. Brian pushed back along their psychic connection, and sent Tyler a crushing tsunami of anxiety.
Tyler shuddered under the impact. With shaking hands, he gripped the window frame for support. His legs buckled and he collapsed back into the desk chair.
Brian summoned the second wave in Tyler’s mental demise. He painted himself a vision of his mental fabrication, dear Mr. Jitters, with his long, spindly, spider-like limbs, his carnival-colored clothes, and his death-white face with the painted skeleton’s smile. He added the screeching maniacal laugh. Reliving it sent the hairs twitching on the back of Brian’s neck. Then he sent Mr. Jitters for a call on Tyler.
Brian couldn’t see what Tyler saw in his mind’s eye, but he could feel the impact of it. Sheer, knife-edged terror swept his brother. He backpedaled the chair away from the desk and in Brian’s direction.
“What in the fuck are you?” Tyler shrieked. “Get the hell away from me!”
Brian’s moment arrived. He pulled a short length of white, nylon rope from his pocket, gripped it in both gloved hands, and snapped it into a loop. He rushed from the closet. He had to favor his healing left foot, reminding him of Tyler’s torture. The memory added a last load of fuel to his burning vengeance. He flipped the rope loop over Tyler’s head and yanked it tight.
Tyler choked. He clawed at the rope with both hands, but could get no grip. Brian pulled harder and Tyler’s hands dropped back to his sides.
Brian bent his head to Tyler’s ear. “This is how the other end really feels, Ty. Is it everything you imagined? Ready for that sweet release you forced on all those others? Meredith, Carla, Keisha, Sidney, Candy? All of them are just waiting for you to die like this.”
With the drapes pulled back and the desk light illuminating them, Tyler and Brian cast a sharp reflection in the window against the night’s black background. In the reflection, Brian’s face hovered just above and behind Tyler’s, two white masks against a dark abyss. Tyler’s wide, terrified eyes made Brian smile.
The differences in hair couldn’t distract Brian from the inescapable similarities. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. He and Tyler were two mirror images, reflections in a reflection.
The fear drained from Tyler’s eyes. The corners of his lips turned up.
“See,” he barely wheezed out. “You finally feel it.”
The realization came like a flash of lightning. The fixation. The hunt. The lust for revenge. The pleasure at the edge of this kill. In seconds he’d become what he thought he was about to destroy.
If he didn’t stop it. Now.
He pulled the rope tighter. Tyler gagged. His eyes bulged and his face turned blue. Then his body went limp.
Brian dropped the rope and lowered his brother to the floor. He checked for a pulse under the swelling ligature mark around Tyler’s neck. Still there. He sighed with relief. In that last moment, he’d only wanted his brother unconscious. He had succeeded. He rolled Tyler over and bound his hands together behind him with the nylon rope. He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed.
“Moultrie County Nine-One-One. What is your emergency?”
“Tyler Tracy, a dangerous fugitive, is in Room 122 at the Lamplighter Motel on Highway 41. You need to send someone to pick him up.”
About this book
This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK
Text copyright © 2019 Russell James.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Matteo Middlemiss, Josie Mitchell, Mike Spender, Will Rough, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Nik Keevil and Shutterstock.com.
FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
HB ISBN: 978-1-78758-124-1, PB ISBN:978-1-78758-122-7, ebook ISBN: 978-1-78758-125-8 | Also available in FLAME TREE AUDIO | Created in London and New York
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The Playing Card Killer Page 27
