by R E Swirsky
He slid one foot around the corner and awkwardly forced his body around the side of the house. He reached along the wall and grabbed tight into the ridges of the wooden siding for support. Sweat dripped down Tommy's face, and he felt his hands begin to shake from gripping as hard as he could.
He moved his body inch by inch along the skirting, while still holding his body tight to the wall. He shuffled himself as far to his right along the narrow skirting as he could while he held on to the corner, but Jason's window was still out of reach.
He pulled his head back and pressed his chin tight up against the house. His eyes darted back and forth. He trembled, and his fingers began to cramp. He forced himself to look to the right again, and he tried to reach as far as he could to the window. No matter how far he stretched his fingers, they couldn’t reach Jason's window. Tommy began to panic.
There was nothing to grab hold of. One hand held on to the corner of the house and the other reached towards Jason's window, and only the rough surface of the siding was there to hold on to.
He closed his eyes. He knew he could only hold on like this for a few minutes more at most, before he would lose his grip. His fingers began to tingle and he could feel the numbness begin to set in. He cursed Jason again for telling him of this dastardly route.
He tried to remember what Jason said about getting in the window this way. He was forgetting something.
He felt his left hand fingers start to slip away from the corner of the house. "Think!" he said to himself, "Think!" He remembered nothing.
Tommy couldn't hold his grip any longer and his fingers slowly slipped off the corner. He tried to dig his fingers in, but there was no grip left and his fingernails scraped along the side of the house. Tommy lost his grip and started to fall. Tommy opened his eyes, terrified, and saw what he had forgotten above him.
"Shit!" Tommy shouted, as he thrust both of his arms to the sky. He reached up desperately and successfully wrapped his fingers tight around a two-inch drainpipe that protruded less than four inches out from the wall above his head.
His feet slipped off the narrow ledge, and he hung in the air and scrambled madly to get his feet back on to the skirting. "Shit!" he said. He cursed himself for forgetting that Jason mentioned the spout. It was a small cast iron drain that protruded from the wall. It drained the water from a hidden valley where the rooflines met.
Tommy waited until he recovered his composure and footing with both hands now gripping tight to the drain spout. He shuffled his feet and carefully reached towards Jason's bedroom window with one hand while the other held tight to the drainpipe. He tugged up on the window, and, to his relief, it lifted easily.
Tommy scrambled inside and sat down on the floor, relieved he had made it. It felt good to be off his feet, and he welcomed the brief luxury. He rubbed his hands across his sweaty face, and listened intently for any sounds from inside the house. All was quiet. Tommy leaned against the wall and looked around Jason's old room. He scanned across all of the walls. The room was now bare and stripped of every sign that Jason had ever existed. It hit him hard as if someone did it deliberately. Tommy rested his head in his hands and quietly sobbed.
CHAPTER 86
Dean found Sarah and Gerald's house easily. Sarah's car wasn't in the drive and the search he had dispatch conduct for him said Gerald's truck had been written off in the accident back in December. The registry showed no new registration from Gerald, so Dean was fairly certain that Gerald had no other car than Sarah's. He concluded that Gerald was not home.
He walked up to the front and rang the bell. Gerald didn't answer. He knocked anyway and still got no response. He drew his hands up around his eyes and pressed his face to the glass, just like Simon the day before, and tried to see inside. It was much too dark inside, and all he could see was a short dark hallway.
Dean shuffled himself away from the front door. He sauntered around the side of the house and then further around to the back yard. The back door had no window. He tried the doorknob. It was locked. He moved across the small landing and leaned over the side, hoping to look in through the kitchen window. He could see the drapes open, so he expected to be able to see something inside the house through this window.
Dean rested his body against the railing and leaned out as far as he could toward the kitchen window. He methodically set about to discern what he saw. The kitchen was a mess with dishes propped up in the sink, and the garbage container overflowed in the far corner. On the counter next to the sink was an empty whiskey bottle. Next to the whiskey bottle was one empty glass tumbler and an assortment of tools and utensils.
"What do we have here?" he whispered. It all seemed normal at first, until he studied each one of the items individually. A butcher knife, a cheese grater and a nutcracker were resting on the counter. Dean also spotted a pair of pliers, a roll of duct tape, pruning shears and dirty rags.
Dirty rags? That wasn't dirt he saw on the rags. He instantly recognized the color, and he tensed up as the adrenalin began to pump hard through his veins. He leaned in closer to the window. He needed to be sure about what he saw. He could see the utensils and tools, and they were covered in blood.
Dean leaned farther over the railing in an attempt to see further into room. Just as he spotted the bloody footprints that criss-crossed a number of times across the floor from the front of the house into the kitchen, the railing gave away. Dean crashed hard onto the ground beneath the kitchen window.
He cursed aloud, as he landed on the busted railing, and he felt a new, unwelcome pain blaze through his shoulder and right leg. He lay on the ground for a moment, but his adrenalin blocked all the pain. He knew he had stumbled onto something far more sinister than anything he had bargained for. Dean rose quickly to his feet and he raced around to the front of the house and towards his cruiser. As he came around the corner, he spotted Simon's SUV parked a few doors down.
"Shit!" Dean said. He checked the plate and verified that it was Simon's. He turned, raced back around the way he came and dashed around back and up the stairs to the back door. He opened the screen and threw his body hard against the door. He heard the doorframe crack. He charged again. The door frame gave away, and the door swung inward and slammed against the inside wall. Dean quickly drew his handgun and stepped inside with gun drawn.
As he looked around the kitchen, his stomach turned. Dark, bloodied footprints led from the kitchen out to the next room. He cautiously moved into the kitchen to follow the footprints.
He peeked around the corner into the next room and a wave of fear and terror like he had never felt before rushed him. He spotted the horror that presented itself there. It was like some bad horror scene from a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not exhibit. A single chair sat in the centre of the living room, and fastened in to the chair slumped a body. The body was covered in dried blood. The legs and arms were duct taped to the legs and arms of the chair, and Dean could see many disfigurements that told him that the person in front of him had been savagely tortured.
Dean swallowed hard, moved into the room and stepped closer to the body. Dean new instantly that it was Simon, and he doubted that he was alive, but he needed to check either way. The state of Simon’s body repulsed him. He placed his hand on Simon's neck to check for a pulse, but there wasn’t one.
As Dean looked at Simon's body, he quickly understood the purpose of the utensils in the kitchen. Simon was missing two of his fingers on his left hand, and he had no fingernails left on two of his right fingers. The bones in his right hand appeared to be broken, from being forced back, one by one. He could see bloody ridges in the skin that he was sure would match the pliers that sat on the counter in the kitchen.
Dean put his fingers under Simon's chin, and lifted his slumped head up high until he could see Simon's face.
It was a gruesome sight. Simon had been beaten severely about the head; both of his eyes were bloody and swollen clo
sed. His jaw looked like it was broken, but he couldn't be sure.
He let Simon's head fall forward and he slowly backed out of the room. There was only one thing that crossed his mind now. Sarah.
CHAPTER 87
Tommy slowly crept out from Jason's old room and into the master bedroom to disable the alarm. He could see the red light indicating it was armed. He reached out his hand to enter his code but stopped as he suddenly realized the code may have been changed. He had not even given any thought to that. He stepped back from the alarm pad and looked around the closet desperately, wondering how to proceed. He had only paused a moment when he spotted the yellow sticky note on the wall to his left. A six-digit number was written on the small piece of paper. Tommy took a deep breath and carefully keyed the six numbers into the pad. He pressed the pound button to enter the code, and to his relief the red light changed to green. The alarm was now disabled.
He then moved into the upstairs hall and danced around the many creaks towards the staircase to the main floor. He had to be very careful because the house was old and had many specific sounds. He advanced slowly down the staircase and stopped to duck down every few steps as he scanned the lower level beyond the bottom of the stairs. He saw no sign of anyone in the house on the lower level and crept down further.
It took Tommy a number of minutes to make his way to the bottom of the staircase on the main floor. He breathed a huge sigh of relief as he was nearly at the study. He was almost certain the house was empty.
Tommy clearly remembered how Jason swung the axe that killed their mother after hearing the creaks in the hallway he was now about to walk down. He took a deep breath, put one foot in front of the other and moved closer to the study. He was extremely aware of where he planted each foot.
The door to the study was wide open, and Tommy leaned his head inside to look around. He saw no one and stepped inside. He scanned across the room; it seemed different from when he had lived there. In front of the fireplace were two large back chairs set at an angle facing the fire. To his left was a long, black leather couch that faced the front window with its back to the centre of the room. The dark shears on the window were pulled closed, and the single lamp that rested on the side table, next to the couch, was turned on. It was late afternoon, and the sun was still high, but the shears blocked most of the light that would normally brighten up the large room.
Tommy reached behind him, put his hand on the door and carefully started to push it closed. He wasn't going to close it tight, just enough so he felt safe. The door was almost completely closed when it gave out its custom squeak.
Tommy froze and stared at the door. He waited for someone to suddenly approach from down the hall. He didn't see Sarah pop her head up from behind the black couch where she had been resting as she read a book, unaware that an intruder had entered her home.
He only heard her terrified scream.
CHAPTER 88
Ricky threw another pebble up at Bobby's window and waited, but Bobby still didn't appear. Frustrated, he crawled out from the shadow of the garage and ran up to the back door. He looked inside the window to see if he could see Bobby inside, but he didn't see anyone.
He tapped lightly on the back door and hoped to see movement inside.
As he stared, disappointed, inside Bobby's darkened house, the sound of a vehicle suddenly rose out of nowhere, and Ricky froze right where he stood. Bobby's mother's car appeared from around the side of the house and stopped a few feet away from him. Bobby sat in the passenger seat and rolled his eyes angrily at Ricky.
Ricky remained standing at the back door as Bobby's mother stepped out of the car and walked up to the back door with a bag of groceries in each arm. She burned her eyes into Ricky letting him know that she wasn't pleased to see him standing there.
"Hi, Mrs. Fornier," Ricky said politely.
She frowned and ignored Ricky.
"He's not supposed to be over here, Bobby!” She shouted. “You can tell him to leave right now, and then you can get in this house. Do you hear me?" She walked past Ricky and entered the house as if he didn't even exist.
Bobby nodded sheepishly back to his mother and stepped up beside Ricky. "What the hell are you doing here?" Bobby whispered in Ricky's ear. He snuck a look back at his mother inside the house as she moved about in the kitchen putting the groceries away. "You're supposed to be watching at the river!"
"I got tired of waiting," Ricky replied. "They're not coming."
"They are so!" Bobby hissed vehemently. "Tommy and Jason are coming, and we need to be there."
"Bobby!" His mother shouted from inside the house. "You tell him to go away now!"
"In a second, Mom!" Bobby shouted back.
Suddenly the back door swung wide open and Bobby's mother stood there furious. "I told you to ask him to leave!"
She looked down at Ricky. "Why are you still here? You're not welcome around here anymore! You hear me? Bobby was a good boy. I don't know what's gotten into you, but I won't have you turning my Bobby into a rascal like you." She burned her eyes into Ricky until he turned away. "Now shoo!"
Ricky stepped back away from Bobby and his mother. He shook his head from side to side and shrugged. He didn't know what to do exactly and looked for some direction from Bobby. Bobby dropped his right hand down by his side where his mother couldn't see it, and ushered him away, down the driveway. "I'll catch you later," he whispered. "By the river."
"What did you just say to him?" Bobby's mother asked as Ricky disappeared around the corner of the house.
"Nothing," Bobby replied.
"I don't want you hanging around with him."
CHAPTER 89
Tommy panicked as he heard Sarah scream out and instinctively rushed towards her to silence her. "Shhhh!" he responded, but Sarah only continued to scream louder. She raised her arms to her face in terror at Tommy's sudden presence.
As Sarah continued to scream, Tommy was at a loss about what to do, but knew he had to shut her up as quickly as he could.
"Please, just shut up!" he shouted. "Be quiet! Please, please." Tommy reached out towards her in desperation. Sarah continued to scream as she pulled herself away from Tommy's reach and he saw no option. He lunged forward, grabbed on tight to her and shoved her hard, backwards onto the couch. He continued to wrestle with her until he was on top of her and forced his hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.
"Please, just be quiet!" he called out. He was terrified by the sudden turn of events.
Sarah squirmed underneath him for a few minutes and then suddenly stopped. Her eyes were wide and full of terror as she looked up at Tommy sitting on top of her.
"Shhh, shhhh. That's better," he said. "I'm not going to harm you. Honest," he said. He didn't remove his hand from her mouth. He kept his body on top of hers while he thought about what he was going to do next.
He really needed to get into that room quickly, but he decided it would probably be impossible if he let her up. He puzzled quickly over his options and finally decided what to do. He searched around the room for anything he could use to tie this woman up and immediately spotted a charger cord for a cell phone plugged into an outlet only a few feet away.
"Okay," he said calmly to her. "Here is what we are going to do..."
Sarah stared back at Tommy, and he could see the fear growing in her eyes. Tommy hated what he was about to do, but decided he had to do this if he wanted to finish what he came for.
"I'm so sorry, but I’m going to have to tie you up."
Sarah started to squirm again.
"Wait a sec! I mean it. Stop moving!" Tommy shouted, and she immediately stopped.
"I promise I'm not going to hurt you. I can't hurt you," he said and hoped she would believe him.
"But you still need to let me do this. Please."
Tommy could see the terror in her eyes.
"I'm going to remove my hand, and you're no
t going to scream. Okay?"
Sarah nodded back.
"That's good, that's good," he replied. "But I do have to tie you up, and I promise that I will not touch you at all."
Tommy removed his hand from Sarah's mouth, and nodded at her. Sarah remained quiet. He slowly reached one hand over to the small table beside the couch and yanked the charger cord from the wall. He removed himself from the couch, pivoted Sarah to her side and quickly secured her arms behind her back. He repositioned her up on the couch to a seated position and knelt on the floor beneath her.
"I'm not going to touch you at all," he said calmly. "I'm here for another reason, which I will tell you all about in a few minutes, but I need to make sure you won't stop me from what I have to do. Understand?"
Sarah shook her head from side to side sheepishly. Her eyes were wet and frightened.
"What do you want?" she asked. Her voice was shallow and nervous.
Tommy got up from his knees without replying and searched about the room. He spotted a tea towel on the coffee table, grabbed it and carefully ripped it into long strips.
"Well, I don't want to hurt you, that's for sure. But I really can't let you stop me from what I have to do here."
Tommy knelt down before her again and used one of the strips to bind her feet together.
"I am so sorry about this, but I really have to do this. I'll let you go when I'm done."
"Why are you doing this? What do you want?" she asked again. Her voice had steadied some, but the fear remained.
"I'll tell you in a sec," he said as he thought about how much he could tell her. He carefully rolled up another strip of the towel and wrapped it around her head and across her mouth to prevent her from screaming again.
"There," he said. He was confident she wouldn't give him any trouble now that she was tied and gagged. Tommy left Sarah sitting on the couch at the front of the room and made his way over to the fireplace. He glanced back to see Sarah strain to follow him with her head twisted around. He nodded back at her and pointed to the fireplace.