by Lukens, Mark
“You’re making a big mistake, Cole” Needles said, trying to keep his voice as calm and reasonable-sounding as possible. “That kid, he’s doing all of this somehow. I know it.”
Cole looked away.
“Listen to me, please. You need to kill that kid. That kid’s doing all of this. He’s the demon. The devil. He’s going to get all of you in the end if you don’t kill him first.”
Jose stood by the table and inspected the “tools” that Cole had laid out: various spoons, a few different kinds of kitchen knives, a bowl, some rags for cleaning up. The duct tape was near the tools. He picked up the roll of duct tape and tossed it to Cole. “Shut him up, will you?”
Cole caught the roll of tape.
Needles’ eyes followed the tape and he stared at Cole, pleading with him. “No, wait! You have to listen to me! I’m not crazy! I know what’s going on here! It’s that kid!”
Cole wrapped the duct tape around Needles’ mouth, wrapping it around his head several times, covering the lower half of his face with the tape.
Needles screamed into the tape and struggled again. Tears flowed from his eyes as he sobbed into the tape.
Jose picked up a small, serrated kitchen knife and stood in front of Needles. He looked at Cole who stood behind Needles. “You ready?” he asked Cole.
Cole managed a small nod as he swallowed hard. “I guess.”
“Hold him still,” Jose said.
Cole grabbed each side of Needles’ head and held him as still as he could. He pried Needles’ left eyelid open with his fingers as he held him.
Jose brought the tip of the knife close to Needles’ left eye which was bulging with fear, the eye couldn’t look away, couldn’t help but watch the tip of the knife as it got closer and closer, the knife shook a little in Jose’s unsteady hand.
Just as Jose was about to sink the tip of the blade into the side of Needles’ eyeball, Needles moved and Jose jabbed Needles in the cheek just below the eye; the wound began to bleed immediately, the blood ran down his cheek and down the tape, the blood dripped down onto the cross hanging outside of his thermal shirt.
Jose backed away, suddenly angry. “Shit, man. You’ve got to hold him still.”
Cole dropped his hands away from Needles’ head and backed away. “I’m trying. He’s struggling too much.”
Jose sighed and set the knife back on the table. He pulled his gun out from the waistband of his pants and he walked around to the back of Needles.
“Struggling too much?” Jose asked, and then he wacked Needles on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, knocking Needles out instantly.
Needles’ head slumped forward and his breathing was even and steady out of his nose.
Jose stuffed his gun back into his pants and walked back to the table. He picked up the knife and a spoon. He looked at Cole. “Hold his eyelids open. I’m sure it doesn’t want these eyeballs damaged.”
Cole shuddered, but he moved in beside Jose. He pried Needles’ left eye open and the eyeball stared back at them, lifeless and unconscious.
“I’m going to cut it out and you get the bowl ready to put it in.”
“Just hurry,” Cole said.
*
Thirty minutes later, Cole and Jose sat at the dining room table, both of them exhausted. Needles was still unconscious and tied to the dining room table chair, his bloody head hung forward, blood-stained gauze and duct tape were wrapped around his face where his eyes used to be, but the tape was off of his mouth now to allow him to breathe more easily.
Stella and David were still in the bedroom. Cole was about to go and get them. He and Jose had cleaned up the mess around Needles as best as they could. They put his eyeballs in a bowl and left them out on the front porch – a gift for that monster out there.
Suddenly, Needles woke up. He lifted his head up and screamed. “My eyes! You took my eyes!”
Cole jumped to his feet and ran over to Needles. “Just try to calm down, Needles.” His own words sounded surreal to his ears, this whole situation seemed unreal to him.
“It hurts!” Needles howled. “It hurts so bad! Why did you do this to me, Cole?”
“You deserved it, you sick son of a bitch,” Jose said; he was still seated at the dining room table, a few feet away from Needles. “If you hadn’t shot that old man in the bank, we wouldn’t even be here.”
Needles wouldn’t stop crying and screaming. “Oh, God, where are you, Cole?” Needles rocked his head back and forth like he was trying to look around the room with eyes he didn’t have anymore.
“I’m right here,” Cole said from right beside Needles. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he looked at Needles, once his friend, now tied to a chair with his eyes carved out. What had he done? Cole asked himself. What had he become?
Needles still looked around as he moaned, like he couldn’t quite place where Cole was. “It hurts so bad!! I can’t take the pain!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Jose screamed at Needles, and then he got to his feet beside the table and glanced at Cole. “Shut him up again, please.” Jose paced away from the table, into the hallway, he needed to be away from Needles, he couldn’t take the crying anymore, but even in here he could still hear Needles screaming and moaning.
“Please, Cole. I can’t take the pain anymore. I … I can’t take – ”
Needles’ last words were cut off by a booming gunshot in the cabin.
Jose rushed back out from the hallway to see Cole standing behind Needles; Cole had his gun in his hand, still aimed at the back of Needles’ head. Needles was slumped forward in the chair as far as the rope and tape would allow him. His head was pitched forward and blood drained from the large wound in his forehead where the bullet had exploded out of his face. The gauze and tape over his eyes was stained dark red already, and a puddle of blood was forming on the floor in front of the chair.
Jose stared at Cole in shock. “What the fuck did you do?”
Cole shook his head no as he stared at Jose with a vacant look in his eyes. “I couldn’t leave him suffering like that. I couldn’t let him keep feeling that kind of pain.”
Jose paced around the living room, a rage building in him quickly. He ran his hand through his dark hair several times. “Did you stop to think that the thing outside didn’t want him dead?”
Cole watched Jose. “I don’t care. I wasn’t going to let him keep on suffering.”
Jose punched his fist at the air a few times in frustration, and then he turned to Cole. “Fuck! We needed Needles! What are we supposed to do if that thing out there wants another body part? We could’ve used Needles over and over again.”
Cole felt that now familiar wave of nausea washing over him again, but this time it was Jose that nauseated him. He could feel his own rage building up inside of him, that rage that had been just beneath the surface of him the whole time he’d been in this cabin. “Let’s get Needles out on the front porch, and then it can have all the body parts it wants.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
As the sun dipped down below the forest of trees in the west and the winter sky darkened in the east, Needles’ body lay on the floorboards of the front porch not too far away from his eyeballs which were offered up in one of Tom Gordon’s plastic cereal bowls. Both eyeballs faced the woods like they were looking at them. The freezing wind had picked up a little and the trees swayed, but there wasn’t any snow falling yet.
Inside the cabin Cole, Jose, and Stella sat at the dining room table. The area in the dining room had been cleaned up as much as possible, but the chair that Needles had been tied to was still stained with blood and it was pushed in at the table, the back facing the hallway. The wood floor still had dark smears of blood stained into it from where Cole and Jose had dragged Needles’ body outside. The coils of bloody rope and telephone cords were piled up near the freezer, and the duct tape and gauze that had been wrapped around Needles’ head and body was now in the trash can.
David sat on the couch and watched t
he three as they sat at the table. He had his spiral notebook near him, but he wasn’t drawing in it now – it seemed like he was done with the things he had drawn. Every few minutes David glanced at the front door like he was expecting someone to come to the door.
Jose sat at the table with his hands curled around the whiskey bottle. He sipped from the bottle every few minutes and he was beginning to get a little drunk. He was beginning to lose his control just a little. But he didn’t care; he needed the numbness that the whiskey brought with it, even if just for a little while.
Cole and Stella sat close to each other at the table. The cabin was silent; the only sound that could be heard was the whistling winter wind outside playing around the eaves. In the silence, Stella spoke.
“I’m an archeologist,” she said, and then she looked at Cole.
Cole nodded; she’d already told him that before. He was tired now, beyond exhaustion. He wasn’t sure how many nights he’d stayed awake, and he was pretty sure he’d had only about eight hours of sleep in the last few days.
“I specialize in the cultures of the Southwest Native Americans,” Stella continued, and it seemed like she was leading somewhere this time, like there was something she finally wanted to tell them, something she finally wanted to reveal. “Especially the Anasazi. The Anasazi were a group of people who lived in that region hundreds of years ago. They built massive cities all over the region. They built kivas and they constructed roads that went on for miles and miles. They built some of their cities right into the sides of cliffs, massive cities carved right into the solid rock. The only way to get up to the city was by ladders or hand and toe holds carved right into the rock.”
Stella sipped her coffee. She glanced at David who watched her, and then she looked at Cole who was listening to her. “These cities, and some of their other cities, were highly defensible, like they were constantly at war and constantly defending themselves, like they were constantly afraid of something. Some scientists speculate that they were afraid of other tribes of Indians. But at that time, the Anasazi were the most advanced tribe in that area, maybe even in all of North America. Who would they need to be afraid of?”
Jose sipped his bottle of whiskey. “Is this going somewhere?” he asked her, his words slurring just slightly.
“About seven hundred years ago the Anasazi vanished,” Stella continued, undaunted by Jose’s remark.
“Like many groups of people in North and South America, the Anasazi built massive cities and roads, they built an entire civilization, and then they abandoned them, like they just walked away. Recent findings at some Anasazi sites have uncovered mass graves of murder victims and evidence of cannibalism.”
“The history lesson is fascinating …” Jose said and let his words trail off as he sipped more whiskey.
Stella ignored Jose as she went on. “I got a call from a colleague, a man named Jake. He told me that he’d made an amazing discovery, the greatest of his life. Maybe one of the most amazing and important discoveries in archeological history, and he asked for my help. He needed my expertise of the Anasazi history.”
Stella paused for a moment, sipped more coffee, and then she continued. “Jake wanted everything kept quiet until we were sure what we’d really found. I drove there and met him at the dig site. It was amazing. Jake had found a hidden cave system, and inside the cave were the ruins of a civilization. An Anasazi civilization, I was sure of it.”
Cole stared at Stella. “And that’s where this happened to you and David. Like what’s happening here.”
“Yes. That’s where I found David. He was bloody, but not hurt. But he couldn’t remember what had happened. He wouldn’t even talk to any of us at first. He was afraid of everyone. Except me.”
Stella looked at David to gauge his reaction. He just stared back at her with his dark eyes, eyes that were almost black. He sat motionless on the couch, not moving a muscle.
“Not long after we found David, that’s when everything started to go wrong. Jake suggested that one of us take David to the nearest Navajo village and get some help for him. But …” Stella glanced at David again.
David watched her and then he looked at the front door.
“But our vehicles wouldn’t start. There was nothing wrong with them, they just wouldn’t start. Like all of the batteries had died at the same time.”
David’s breathing grew quicker as he watched the door.
“Then the first person went missing. Jim Whitefeather, a friend of mine. He left in the middle of the night like he just walked off into the desert. Or into the cave.”
“But then he came back,” Cole finished for her.
Stella nodded.
“What did he ask for?” Cole asked.
“It was like this. He asked for body parts.”
“And you guys gave him what he asked for?”
“Not at first,” Stella answered quickly. “We tried to run. Tried to escape. Tried to fight back. But it wouldn’t let us go. It made an example out of one of us.”
Cole stared at her.
“An example like Trevor,” she explained.
Cole flinched at his brother’s name. Cole looked away, thinking for a moment as he pushed the thought of his brother out of his mind. Then he looked back at Stella as a thought occurred to him. “So this thing just took you guys one by one, and then asked for body parts? And you don’t know why.”
“It was making us do things. Trying to scare us so badly that we’d do anything it wanted, anything it asked us to do no matter what it was.”
“Because it was leading up to something,” Cole said.
Stella saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced over at David and saw that he was frightened now as he stared at the front door. He was up on his feet, standing next to the couch. She looked back at Cole as he asked his next question.
“It was leading up to something specific,” Cole told her. “Wasn’t it?”
Stella didn’t answer. Cole had figured it out. A quick glance at Jose told her that Jose was getting drunk now and not really listening to them anymore, his eyes were nearly closed, pure exhaustion taking over his body.
“It’s leading up to something specific here, too,” Cole said, staring at her with an expression that seemed accusatory and victorious at the same time. “You know what it wants, don’t you?” he asked, his voice getting louder. It was even beginning to rouse Jose from his drunken slumber.
Stella looked over at David. He took a step towards the front door, then another, almost like he was in a trance.
Cole turned in his chair and looked at David, and then he turned back and looked at Stella. “You know what it’s going to ask for next,” he said even louder. “You know what it wants.”
“He’s out there,” David said from the living room.
This brought Jose fully awake. He jumped up from his chair and spun around on his feet and stared at David. Then he looked at Cole and Stella, the fear was back in his eyes now.
David took another two steps towards the door, and then he stopped and looked at Cole. “He’s calling you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Jose didn’t waste any time. He grabbed his coat and walked right to the front door on legs that were a little unsteady from the amount of whiskey he’d drank in a short amount of time.
“Jose, wait,” Cole said a low voice.
Jose turned and looked at Cole through red-rimmed and terrified eyes. “No, we need to go out there. We can’t keep it waiting. We have to do whatever it wants.”
Jose turned and marched towards the front door.
Cole and Stella exchanged glances. Stella nodded and Cole followed Jose to the door. Jose was already unlocking the deadbolt. Stella took David’s hand and they both followed Cole and Jose outside onto the porch.
The four gathered outside on the porch, a few steps away from the door. Stella was closest to the door. She closed the door almost all the way, leaving it open just a crack. The yellowish light f
rom inside the cabin could be seen through the crack in the doorway. Outside, the world was growing dark very quickly. And it was getting colder.
Frank stood in the same spot as he had before, only thirty yards away from the cabin. The snow was up to his calves and he wore the same clothes. He stood very still, no movement at all, almost just a shadow himself in the pitch black darkness that was descending on the land as the night moved in.
Cole stared at Frank, and he thought of what Jose had said, about Frank’s body being hollowed out. Yet here he stood. Cole believed Jose now after seeing his own brother’s pieces put back together into a walking and talking body.
Frank stared at them with a blank expression; there were no fake smiles from him anymore, no need to pretend any longer. They knew Frank was just a hollowed-out corpse now, just a meat puppet with some all-powerful, invisible force pulling his strings. Frank spoke in a loud, guttural voice. “He is very pleased so far. He believes you are ready for your final task.”
The four waited on the porch. None of them moved or said anything. They didn’t shout back at Frank like they had done before; they didn’t challenge him, or threaten him. What else could they do but listen to his demand?
“When you give him this one last thing he wants,” Frank continued, “then he will let you walk out of here untouched. You will be allowed to keep your money and leave.”
They were silent for a long moment, and then Cole finally spoke up. “What does he want?”
Stella held her breath. Cole had been right earlier in the cabin; she did know what Frank was going to ask for next. She knew all along what this was leading up to – one final task, one final request from this thing. She looked at David. She still held his hand, and she squeezed his hand a little harder.
