“It’s your favorite,” he informs me, though I’d already recognized it as the same kind Graham and I splurge on for special occasions. Perhaps Footloose hunted through my kitchen while stashing Shanté’s severed foot in my fridge. Or while he framed me and filled my house with Soda Jack cans. Or hid in my closet for hours.
I take another sip, hoping my downward gaze helps to mask my expression, my horror and outrage at the extent of his invasion of privacy and my sheer inability to see the signs. Unintentional, perhaps, but Becca had helped him hide. Every misplaced item, every bad feeling, every wary gut instinct, I’d attributed to her. And now that she’s gone and I’d dared hope that my life could be some kind of normal, another serial killer has decided to recruit me for his sick game.
I place the glass back on the table. “It’s wonderful,” I lie, knowing I’ll never drink it again.
“I like it, too. It’s pricey, but worth it.”
I hide a shudder of revulsion at learning we have something else in common.
“The bodies you buried,” Footloose begins, turning the remote in his hands, “how many did you kill?”
I can’t imagine there’s a point in lying. “Thirteen.”
“Not in total. You, personally. How many did you kill?”
“None.” The answer comes out too quickly, too defensive, and I instantly regret it. If he wants a partner, he might want someone whose stomach doesn’t churn at the mere thought of an annual body-burying expedition. He might want Becca, not her incompetent sister.
“Not your co-worker? The one trying to steal your job?”
The reminder that he was listening to my conversations makes bile rise in my throat, but I say only, “No. Becca killed her. I’ve never hurt anyone.”
“Hmm.” He sounds disappointed and turns the remote in his hand contemplatively before giving a tiny shrug. “Well,” he says finally, “this may be a bit…much. But it’s important for you to know what I do. To see if we’d be a good fit.”
If he cared for the truth, if he were at all capable of seeing exactly what’s in front of him, he’d already know we’re not a good fit. He’d know I want nothing to do with serial killers. That I was, in fact, looking for him, not to team up, but to kill him. At least, that’s what Becca was going to do. I was going to help hide the body. But I don’t have a choice. I never did.
“Let me know if you need a break,” he says politely before pressing PLAY. “And help yourself to more wine.”
I squeeze my eyes shut instinctively, expecting screams and gore to explode from the television screen. But instead I’m greeted with silence. I crack open an eye and feel Footloose watching me. Then I risk a look at the TV. It shows an empty room with a bare bulb hanging overhead, a white square outline on the floor, and a prone body lying inside it. After a minute, the body moves and slowly pushes to a sitting position. I swallow a gasp when I recognize Ron Anderson, the man whose smiling face, red hair, and freckles I’d seen in a frame on top of a casket at a funeral too few had attended.
Ron looks confused and then winces and rubs his hip. My own hip gives a sympathetic twinge, and I know he drugged them all. Drugged them, bound them, stuffed them in a trunk, and drove them…somewhere. Did their last nights alive begin with a steak dinner, a nice bottle of red, and a movie?
On-screen, Ron starts coughing. The volume is too loud, and the sound makes me jump. Footloose murmurs an apology and lowers the volume but never looks away from the TV, riveted by his work. There’s a cut, and a new camera angle captures Ron on his hands and knees, coughing and fumbling his way around the room, the scene growing misty with something white. Smoke, maybe. Poison, perhaps, sprayed into the room. It makes him weak, and he collapses onto his stomach, trying to cover his face with his sweater, legs twitching.
“He didn’t get very far,” Footloose explains as the screen flickers and we’re in the same scene but with a new player, someone the police have yet to identify, and may never. It’s a woman with shoulder-length dark hair and tan skin, her eyes wide and afraid. She pounds on the walls and screams at the camera, dropping to her knees as the white mist overtakes her. Her body is racked with cries and poison, but then her right hand catches on something in the floor, and she fights to stay conscious, pulling on whatever she’s found. All of a sudden a trapdoor opens, and she falls through, dropping out of sight.
The next room is darker than the first, but there are multiple cameras here, too. Some of them reveal the others, tiny red dots glowing like eyes. This room has some kind of pool, if the splashing is any indication. The display switches to something hazy and green, like night-vision goggles. It allows me to see the woman from the first scene trying to escape the pool, but she can’t. She keeps trying, gripping the sides, flinging herself at the edges but slipping back. There’s something preventing her escape. She disappears under the water, and I count the seconds. One, five, ten. She emerges, gasping for breath, and tries again to get out. Fails again. Back under the water. It happens over and over until I count to ten, and she doesn’t reappear. Not when I get to twenty, thirty, a hundred.
I risk a look at Footloose. He’s riveted. His homemade torture porn, and his newest, and possibly first, audience member. I take a larger gulp of wine, willing my expression to appear respectfully interested when he checks on me, pausing the video.
“It’s really elaborate,” I say, because it’s true. He’ll know I’m lying if I’m too effusive, and he won’t want to partner with me if I tell him it makes me sick to my stomach, more sick than anything Becca did. Becca’s crimes were stashed in trunks and wrapped in murder carpets. His have been recorded, edited, saved. Shown. Telling the truth will land me in his house of horrors, assuming I’m not there already. “Your home is amazing,” I add tentatively, hoping to stall so I don’t have to watch anymore.
“Oh, that’s not this place.” He chuckles. “This is home. That’s my…cabin.”
He makes cabin sound like a bad word, but I just smile encouragingly. “Did you design it?”
A proud nod. “Designed it, built it.”
“You’re very talented.” I gesture at the furniture. “Is this your work, too?”
“Oh, no. I’m not a carpenter by trade. It’s just a hobby.”
“What do you do?” It’s a risk to ask, to make him suspicious, but he just shrugs.
“I’m retired.”
“So young.”
A small smile. “But I was a butcher. You’ll see.”
My stomach tries to leap out through my mouth as he presses PLAY again, and my mind fast-forwards through the pool and its drowned victims, imagining whatever room must wait for those unlucky enough to escape the water, those who fight for their lives and never win the battle. What’s their prize for surviving too long? A butcher’s table? A homemade guillotine, fed through feetfirst? Because no one wins, I’ve always known that. Becca never fought fair; her targets didn’t even know she had them in her sights. Footloose chose people who were already struggling and then drugged them and drugged them again, asking them to play a game he’d rigged from the start.
Two more people drown in the pool, a man and a woman. It’s too dark to recognize them, to know if I’d attended their funerals. The fourth victim disappears under the water, and I begin my countdown, jolting in my seat when there’s a loud rushing sound and the pool begins to drain.
The camera cuts to a new room, a safer-looking room, with a couch and a towel and a confused, staggering, dripping-wet Shanté peering around, eyes wild and terrified. Carefully she reaches for the towel, pinching it between two fingers and shaking it out. On the screen, Footloose’s voice sounds soft and quiet, making me and Shanté jump.
“Go ahead,” he says. “Dry off. Make yourself comfortable.”
She whips around but doesn’t find the source of the voice. It’s rigged. Not just the game. The whole house. Cameras, microphones. I think about my house and Becca’s apartment. He knew she’d found something, and that’s why he kille
d her. He knew about Detective Schroeder because he heard me discuss him. Maybe he even watched me. Those times in my home, he wasn’t just leaving severed feet and Soda Jack cans. He was placing cameras and microphones. The thought makes me almost as sick as what’s happening on the screen, watching a horror movie where you know the heroine doesn’t survive.
Footloose monitors my reaction with an intensity that belies his casual posture, the glass of wine held loosely in his hand. “You knew her,” he remarks.
“We’d met.”
“You liked her.”
I try to shrug. “It was only a couple of times.”
He turns back to the television. “I liked her, too. She was smart. Not everyone made it this far.”
“But they all died.”
“I overestimated them. I thought they would all make it to the end.” He lifts a shoulder. “But they didn’t.”
On-screen, Shanté paces, drying herself with the towel. She eyes the neatly folded change of clothes but doesn’t touch them. She’s waiting. It’s all she can do. Wait and stare at the cameras that capture her final moments.
All of a sudden there’s a loud whirring sound, and two doors are revealed on opposite walls. They each expose a staircase, one up and one down. Shanté stares between them, knowing as I do that neither one leads anywhere she wants to go. A high-pitched whine starts, not too bad at first but quickly growing louder, and just as quickly becoming unbearable. Shanté covers her ears and falls to her knees, her eyes clenched shut with pain. Suddenly, she lets out a blood-curdling scream. “Is this what you did to my friend?” she shrieks. “Is this what you did to her?”
In response, the whining grows impossibly louder. My heart pounds, and my own head starts to hurt, and Footloose must feel it, too, because he lowers the volume more so we can’t hear; we can only see. Shanté crawls toward the nearest stairwell, the one leading up. No, I want to tell her. Not that way. But she disappears into the darkness, and after a minute, an eternal minute of nothing, the screen fades to black.
I blink. “That’s it? That’s the end?”
“For now. What did you think?”
What I think is definitely not what I’m about to say. What I think about instead is what Becca would do. What she would say. And most important, what she would want to hear.
“It’s so different,” I tell him. “I feel…” I’m not pretending I’m at a loss for words. I don’t know how to finish the sentence. “…special,” is what I settle on.
Something flashes in Footloose’s eyes. It might be delight or it might be suspicion. He’s insane, so it’s hard to pin down.
“The whole world is obsessed with you,” I continue hurriedly. “They want to know who you are, and how you do what you do, and why you do it…And you chose me.”
The corner of his mouth moves like he’s trying to hide a smile. “Did you love your sister?”
The question is as simple as it is startling. My mind forms several questions before my mouth settles on an answer. “Yes, of course.”
“But she made you a criminal. An accomplice. Her bitch.”
I try not to flinch. “I didn’t say I liked her.”
“That’s an interesting distinction.”
“We had an interesting relationship.”
I hide my distaste at the implication that he knew about our relationship because he’d watched it, filmed it, saved it. “How about your wife?” I ask instead. “Did she know about your…interest?”
He smiles. “Just my interest in building things, dabbling in engineering. She was a good person. You remind me of her.”
My insides curdle. “I do?”
“Your hair,” he clarifies. “When I saw you that night in the forest, I thought you were her. Just for a moment.”
I force a flattered smile. “Oh.”
“But better, in a way. Because you knew. You knew your sister. You knew her dark side, and you helped her. I’ve never had anyone who really knew me. Not like that.”
“Her dark side wasn’t all she was,” I say, because it’s what he wants to hear, not because it’s true. “She was good, too.”
It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting, but I think he blushes.
“What happens now?” I hope I sound curious and not nauseous, not desperate to have these bindings removed so I can restore circulation to my hands and feet and make a run for it.
He cocks his head slightly. “What would you like to happen, Carrie?”
“I’d like to know your name.”
“Maybe later.”
“And I’d like to know where my sister is.”
“Maybe later.”
I give myself a mental kick. For a split second, I forgot he was a lunatic, a narcissist. Becca, just in a different form. He doesn’t care what I want. He doesn’t know how to care. “What would you like to happen?” I ask instead.
He smiles because I knew the right answer after all. “I’d like you to pass a test.”
There was never a world in which I would like his answer. It was never going to be a good answer. Something nice, sane, easy. But…a test. What kind of test? Crawling out of a poison room? Not drowning in an impossible pool? Picking the right staircase, knowing, deep down, that death waits at both ends?
“I love tests,” I lie. “I got straight A’s in school.”
His teeth flash when he smiles. “Of course you did. Student council president?”
“Treasurer.”
The smile widens. “My house is too challenging.”
“You want me to help you make it easier?”
He sips his wine, still smiling as he shakes his head. “I want better participants. People who really test me.”
I freeze. “What?”
“I want you to bring me someone you think will survive.”
“You want me to choose the next player?”
“Sure, let’s call it that. Who would you choose, Carrie? Who’s the best player you can think of?”
I stare at him, wishing desperately that I could read his mind. It’d be twisted and nightmare inducing, a tortured fun house even more unspeakable than the one he built, but at least I’d know what he wanted. Because Becca always knew. Becca never asked me what I wanted. She asked me to tell her what she wanted to hear.
“Becca?” I whisper.
Footloose goes very, very still, like a marionette whose strings are pulled taut. Then he laughs, turning up his palms like he’s the one who’s completely helpless. “That’s the best you can do?” he asks. “A dead woman?”
My heart pounds so hard it hurts. For the tiniest second, I’d allowed myself to believe Becca wasn’t really dead. That it was all a trick, a demented ploy to get us to this stage of the game. But it’s not. The answer is somehow even worse. Who else would he want me to nominate? I don’t know that many people. My parents? My co-workers? One’s already been murdered. Who else? Rudy from Accounting? Gene from Concepts? Troy with the hideous shirts? Or maybe Mr. Myer across the street, always trying to nose his way into my business?
“Detective Greaves,” I say, even as the truth settles on my shoulders with a weight that threatens to crush me.
Slowly, Footloose shakes his head. He doesn’t even say the words, but I know he’s thinking them. Two strikes. I only have one more try.
But I can’t. I can’t say it. I can’t say Graham’s name because he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever known, the best man, the sweetest, kindest guy who didn’t even believe in Footloose but has always, despite my most horrible secrets, believed in me. He saw the best part of me, the part I want desperately to be my whole life now that Becca’s gone. Now that the worst is supposed to be over.
I open my mouth, willing myself to cooperate, to play my part. Graham. Two syllables, and the ultimate betrayal. Maybe he’d make it through the house. Maybe I could help him somehow. Two against one. We could take down Footloose together. But I’m strapped to a chair, and Footloose doesn’t fight fair, and I know he wouldn’t start now. He�
�d drug Graham, and maybe worse. He’d make him run that losing gauntlet, and the only thing that would be different this time is that I’d be forced to watch.
Footloose clicks his tongue, his disappointment unmistakable in the sharp sound. That was the real test. And I failed.
“Well,” he says, pushing back his chair. The wooden legs screech over the floor, making my ears ring. “That was a waste of fucking time, wasn’t it?”
“You’re a cheater,” I say, knowing it’s my only play. That if he’s too mad at me, he’ll lose focus. He’ll get clumsy. And he’ll forget Graham and only make one of us pay for my sins. “No one makes it out of that house alive because you cheat.”
Footloose rolls his eyes and goes to the fireplace, grabbing a small, flat box from the mantel. “Don’t be righteous, Carrie. It’s a game. Someone has to lose.”
He opens the box and retrieves a syringe and a small vial. He stabs the needle in violently, pulling back the plunger, filling it with his drug.
“And you only choose losers,” I say, pedaling with my feet as best I can, backing away as he stalks toward me. “You said it yourself. They were losers. You tried to make it into something special, claiming you were avenging your wife. But you were being a coward. You made a stupid house of horrors, and you picked weak people to play, congratulating yourself when they lost. But they were already lost. You only told us what we already knew.”
He’s fighting to keep his composure, but the muscles in his neck are tense, and a vein on his forehead bulges. “I guess you’ll confirm the theory,” he says. He grabs me by the hair, yanks my head back, and slides the tip of the needle into my skin.
* * *
The good news is I’m alone, and Graham is nowhere to be found. The bad news is everything else. I’m lying on my side on a floor, wrapped once again in Becca’s murder carpet and its accompanying stench. My face and feet are freezing, exposed to the cold air of what I imagine is Footloose’s cabin. I peek through my lashes, doing my best not to move.
The room is dark, the only light coming from a door on the opposite wall with a tiny window above it, no bigger than a hardcover book. Light from the full moon trickles across the wide expanse of shiny dark floor like a path to freedom. I don’t need his home movies to tell me this is the last room in his house of horrors, the one scene he didn’t show me.
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