by Ryan Horvath
Perfect Art thought.
He sauntered confidently back to the front and used the private street to access the rear of the townhouse community. Within a minute, he was at the service door. He found a storm door here as well and it was unlocked. Art looked around and found himself utterly alone. The land behind the community was lined with tall trees and there was a railroad track on the other side of those. Furthermore, the townhomes had been designed in such a way that if any of Voight’s neighbors wanted to see Art, they’d have to hang their heads out their windows.
Absolutely perfect Art thought again.
He silently opened the storm door and pressed his ear to the service door.
All was silent on the other side.
Art put his hand on the door knob and turned it. It was, of course, locked. But a locked door was not going to stop Art. He turned the knob hard, and his powerful hand caused the mechanisms inside the knob to rupture, disabling the lock without visibly damaging the knob. When he let the knob go, the door popped open and Art noted that anyone looking at the knob would not know its purpose now was purely cosmetic. He stepped stealthily inside and quietly closed the doors behind him.
Art found the garage empty of any vehicles but the lingering smell of engine exhaust told him a vehicle had recently been here. His eyes quickly found the small green light indicating a garage door opener and he strode over to it. He pressed the button for the light only and the large space was cast in warm yellow light from the garage door opener.
The garage looked like most garages Art had seen. Shelves with stuff on them. Tools on a pegboard. A workbench.
One thing caught Art’s eye that was not typically in a garage. There was a fair sized chalkboard on one of the walls with quite a bit of stuff written on it and mostly lined out. Art walked softly to the chalkboard and when he stood before it and started to read, he scratched his head in confusion.
Canned food? Gas? Sleeping Bags? Bottled water? More hand guns? Art questioned himself. What was all this for?
Each item on the board had a common symbol next to it and Art quickly found the legend for these symbols in the top right corner of the board. The symbols stood for Honda, SUV, Trailer, and Cargo bin.
Art thought about this for a moment and then deduced what was going on.
They left he thought. They God damn left! But why? They couldn’t possibly have known I was coming. Could they? Art thought about all the good things that had happened to him this week. He knew Shepherd had undergone age regression himself. Had he developed some kind of sixth sense as well; like a counterpart to Art’s amped up strength?
It won’t fucking matter Art thought. I will still tear his head off.
Art knew they were gone and not coming back. Now he just needed to find out where.
Art walked back over to the door next to the garage door opener pad and turned the knob. It opened for him and he found himself in a small basement. The room contained the usual accoutrements: a side by side washer dryer, a folding table, a furnace and a water heater. There was a staircase and Art proceed confidently up the stairs, his need for stealth had departed. He opened the door at the top and found himself standing in Voight’s kitchen. He looked around and saw nothing of interest. He walked down a hallway and found a bedroom. It too held no clues for Art. He found a second bedroom he guessed was where this Voight man laid his head to rest. The room contained a personal computer, which immediately caught Art’s eye. He crossed the room, switched the computer on and sat down in the chair.
When the computer was fully booted up, Art found himself greeted with a password prompt. He knew nothing about Voight to guess a password so he decided to try the old fashioned way. Art knew most people chose passwords based on something they could see while they sat at the computer. There were seven items in Art’s immediate view and he was pleased when he found the fourth entry he tried to be successful. Once inside the computer, Art opened an Internet Explorer window and checked the history. He found nothing. Voight must have purged his history when he shut down his computer. He closed Internet Explorer and sat there angrily staring at the screen, unsure of what to do next. He wanted to destroy the machine, trash the house, go AWOL on this mission, and spend the next few days fucking the bitch woman into an oozing, sniveling, malfunctioning mess.
Then in the lower left corner of the tool bar, to the right of the start icon, Art noticed a lone Mozilla Firefox shortcut icon. He quickly clicked on it. When the window was open, Art quickly pulled up the browsing history.
This time he was rewarded and a full list of websites Voight had visited was displayed.
Art scanned the list. It was mostly comprised of real estate listings.
Was he shopping for a house? Art wondered.
No intuition told him. Not shopping. Searching.
Art recalled the most recent page in the browsing history and a real estate listing for a foreclosed property came up. Art looked at the address and felt like he had been slapped. The property couldn’t be more than three miles from where he had the bitch woman held prisoner.
“Unbelievable,” Art whispered to the empty room. He quickly selected the print option from the file menu and printed out the listing. He snatched the paper copy from the print tray and left the room, not bothering to shut down the computer. He quickly left the bedroom, then the house via the same way he had come in and he did not close up the garage service door.
He traversed quickly back to where he had parked his bumperless car, got in, and drove back to his apartment in the city. He parked in the underground parking ramp and took the stairs up to his unit.
He walked to his kitchen and secured two more saline bags from his refrigerator. He’d have to pay the bitch woman a little visit to change her bags before going after Shepherd and that would take time but he wasn’t worried. He finally knew where Shepherd was. Art would get him.
Art calmly strode back to his car and drove out of the ramp feeling good. He’d get to kill again soon. Shepherd, at the very least, and Voight and Turner if they got in the way, which Art severely hoped they would. Then back to the woman in the basement to satisfy carnal fantasies that will make her lose her sanity and beg for death.
As Art joined westbound traffic on I-394 on his way to Orono, he found himself humming along with the radio. Today was going to turn out just fine and he was excited to be able to soon report this troubling mission closed.
55
KAREN AND BLAZE
Karen and Blaze left Mitzi and Ralph’s bed and breakfast after eating and a hug from Mitzi and a handshake from Ralph. They stood by Karen’s car while Blaze did his magic.
“That way,” he barked, indicating northwest. “I can smell Amanda again now too. We’re getting close.”
“Let’s go then,” Karen said and opened the car. Blaze bounced into the passenger seat and Karen slid in behind the wheel. She started the car and proceeded northwest out of Farmington. Their journey took them through the southern suburbs of the Twin Cities and as populations began to grow Karen wondered if Blaze would lose the trail. She slowed the car a little and looked over at him.
Blaze reacted to the slowing of the car and looked back at her.
“We’re heading into another big city. What do you want me to do?” she asked him.
“Keep heading in this direction,” he woofed. “I don’t think they are together right now. They are close but not together. I’m focusing on Amanda’s smell now.”
Relief washed over Karen. If Amanda was still making a smell, then that probably meant she was still alive.
They slowly wound their way through the streets and traffic and stop lights and signs as the morning faded into midday. Outside, the sky was still clear and blue and the sun shone brightly but the temperature gauge on Karen’s dash board showed an outside temperature of sixty-five degrees.
Blaze gave turn by turn directions for Karen to follow and some of the streets they were driving on were residential where Karen could not drive
over thirty miles an hour. Her heart raced in her chest with the anticipation that Blaze may tell her to stop at any time. Each time she looked at him, she found him sitting so tense and still, his ears pulled forward in attention and his nostrils quivering.
“I’m scared, Master Karen,” Blaze chuffed, startling Karen a bit.
“Why?” Karen asked.
“The bad smelling man. He kills people. He won’t hesitate to kill me,” he woofed in response.
“You’re faster than him, Blaze. You’ve just got to stay ahead of him,” Karen reassured. She didn’t feel as confident about herself though as she recalled the up close look she had gotten of the green eyed man earlier this morning.
“Even still… I don’t want to die,” the Dalmatian woofed.
“No one wants to,” Karen said and patted Blaze on the head. “Just try to relax. We’ll cross that bridge if we have to.” She tried to change the subject. “How are we doing? Do I need to make any turns soon?”
“Not yet. I’m pretty sure she’s that way,” Blaze barked and indicated straight. “Not far but still a little ways to go.”
“Okay,” Karen said.
At 1:00 in the afternoon, not long before the eclipse, Karen crossed a town limit sign indicating they had just entered Orono. A water tower confirmed the town’s name.
“Go that way,” Blaze directed, looking to the right and Karen turned the car onto a new street. After about two minutes, he directed a left turn. A moment later, he told her to make another right. They were now on a sparsely populated road outside of the town center. The sign indicated it was named Homestead Trail.
About a moment later, Blaze barked what Karen had been waiting to hear, “There. She’s in there.”
Adrenaline immediately began pumping through Karen. She felt her heart speed up, her rear teeth began to grind against each other, and perspiration broke out under her arms. She slowly guided her car down the long driveway that led to the group of buildings. As she drove, she took in the scenery around her.
This was clearly an abandoned farm. The driveway was lined with a barbed wire fence and Karen guessed the whole property was as well. There was tall browning grass on each side of the driveway and as far as she could see. She noted a large culvert to her left a hundred or so yards in the distance. When she approached the structures, she found no other vehicles near any of the buildings.
“No one here,” Karen said.
“No, he’s not here,” Blaze barked in correction. “But Amanda is. And he’s been here so we should be prepared for him to come back at any moment.”
“You’re right.” Karen stopped the car near what was once a barn. The building’s roof had long ago caved in and the paint had either faded or worn off what was left of the siding. There was, however, enough of the structure still standing to make her car invisible to anyone approaching up the driveway. Karen turned off and stepped out of the car and Blaze jumped out onto the dusty ground beside her. Aside from the barn, there was an outhouse, complete with a crescent moon on the door. A smaller barn or tool shed stood near the outhouse with its door altogether missing. A dark inside was revealed. There was a roof that had once been suspended on four posts and now stood on three. Its unsupported fourth corner hung down. Karen guessed this may have been where a farmer once parked his tractor. Next to the larger collapsing barn, there was a paddock which had probably once held livestock of some sort but now couldn’t contain anything because three sections of its fence had fallen off.
“She’s in there,” Blaze woofed quietly. Karen noticed he was looking at the remains of the house. The paint was stripped off nearly every square inch of the two story dwelling. Four of the five windows on the upper level of the front of the house were broken but none on the main level were. The porch, which was covered and ran the length of the house, had half fallen down. She stepped cautiously on the first step to the front porch and the step creaked beneath her.
Blaze kept pace with Karen and looked worriedly at the front of the house. His tail hung limp between his legs. His ears, however, were erect, listening for any sounds of approaching danger.
When Karen reached the front door, she discovered that unlike the rest of this dilapidated and neglected house, the front door appeared to be fairly new and quite solid. “Shit,” she spat out.
“Let’s walk around,” Blaze suggested with a bark.
A quick round of the house and the two of them discovered all the windows intact and the back door just a solid as the front. They also found on the north side of the house that there was a cellar access that looked to be secured with a rotten two by four. The access was surrounded with tall weeds.
Back at the front door, Karen noticed something she hadn’t before. The door itself was solid but the jamb and frame didn’t look to be. She quickly dashed back to her car and opened the trunk. She yanked up the floor of the trunk, revealing the spare tire.
Blaze stood on his hind legs, rested his forepaws on the bumper and peered in the trunk. “What’s up?” he woofed.
“That jamb isn’t solid. I think I can break in,” Karen answered, snatching up her tire iron. The end of the tire iron not designed to undo the lug nuts ended in a chisel like tip. While still in the trunk, she grabbed her flashlight. Before she went back to the house, Karen remembered the item she had purchased at the clothing store; the thing she hoped would allow her to change one of her or Amanda’s visions. It was a simple long sleeve T-shirt in Amanda’s size that Karen hoped would offer her sister the dignity of being fully clothed while the chase occurred. She slung the shirt over her shoulder and sped back to the door to the house. She jammed the chiseled end of the tire iron into the door frame and the wood quickly and easily began to splinter away.
“Piece of cake,” Karen said, looking down at Blaze. Sweat broke out on her brow.
Within minutes, the door swung inward and Karen and Blaze got their first look inside. Dust bunnies riddled the battered hardwood floor. A staircase to the second floor was just inside and the sunshine revealed several missing treads. A rotting sofa sat against a wall. There were cobwebs in every visible corner. The smell hit them next. Mildew mixed with years of neglect. There were hints of smoke and human waste and Karen dreaded what the bathrooms in this house may look like.
“It smells bad in there, Master Karen,” Blaze softly woofed.
“I know. C’mon,” she whispered and stepped inside. She switched on the flashlight and scanned the small space. The place was disgusting. Karen wondered how long it had been empty and how long it had taken to end up like this and she immediately, again, felt terrible that she had spent so much time getting here.
Karen and Blaze searched the house until they happened upon a door with a new padlock on it.
“In there?” Karen asked.
“In there,” Blaze confirmed.
Karen whacked the padlock with the tire iron and on her third try, the lock broke free. She opened the door and saw a set of stairs leading down into the dark. She ventured a quick glance at her watch. 1:20. She switched on the flashlight and they quickly descended and Karen held the tire iron up in a striking position. At the bottom, they looked and soon found what they had travelled so far to locate.
Amanda Breck stared at them, wide eyed, shaking, and crying.
Karen rushed over to her sister.
But before Amanda could get any words out Blaze approached them and said, “Master Karen, I hear a car coming.”
56
SIMON, JACK, BRIAN, IAN, AND RIVER
Early Friday afternoon, Jack, Brian, Ian, Simon, and River arrived at the foreclosed house just outside Orono. Jack couldn’t have been more pleased when he first saw the place. The house sat smack dab in the middle of four acres with a detached three car garage, a large tool shed, the advertised propane tank, and a paddock that had to have been used for cattle or horses, given the height of its fence. The backside of the land was a horseshoe of forest and Jack knew there was a small lake on the far side of th
e trees. The nearest property was far enough away that one could scream at the top of one’s lungs and likely would not be heard. Jack also noted that the sections of fencing he saw as they approached were in good repair with a full four parallel lines of barbed wire spread between each fence post.
Jack pulled his SUV to a stop in front of the right most garage door. Ian pulled his Honda in next to Jack. Three car doors opened while Jack’s remained closed. Jack reached behind his seat and retrieved his Mossberg. They’d taken a risk driving out here with the weapons and ammunition so Jack was relieved when they arrived without incident with law enforcement. Jack opened his door and stepped out of the SUV to join his friends. He slung the shot gun over his shoulder.
“Seems quiet,” Brian said.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed as he surveyed the area. “Let’s have a look around.”
The four men and one cat proceeded around the south side of the L shaped house. They found all windows intact and no sign of any evidence anyone had beaten them there and was watching them secretly from inside. The exterior of the house and its other structures all appeared to be in good shape. Whatever bank was trying to sell this property had taken care of it although, according to the real estate listing, the house was only eleven years old. When they finished circling, they doubled back to the back door. The door was made of a grid of nine glass panels on top and metal on the lower portion. Ian peered in through the middle panel of glass. “Look’s empty,” he reported. He tried the knob and found it locked. “No surprise there,” he said, pointing at the realtor’s key box that was hanging below the door knob. He looked around the ground area and found what he needed. There was a garden up against the house and it was edged with various types and colors of medium sized rocks. He selected a round reddish rock that was speckled with sparkling flecks of quartz. He bashed the rock through the lower left glass panel and glass shattered inward. Ian reached inside and turned the deadbolt and the thumb latch on the door knob.