Speaking Evil

by Jason Parent

  Dr. Horvat frowned. “I keep telling you, you can have as many as you’d like.”

  “True, but that would spoil the whole motif.”

  Dr. Horvat sighed. “We already have more than ten, if you count me, you, and—”

  “The motif!” Wainwright glared at the doctor. “Besides, you’re confusing the chiefs with”— he crossed his arms and nodded at Sam—“the warriors. Assuming we get Ten back eventually, we need someone to replace the dead one.” His smile widened, and he rubbed his hands together, the needle twirling between his palms. “And who better than a detective?”

  “Let the boy go,” Sam’s voice was low. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Wainwright clicked his teeth and shook his head. “You know, for a detective, you don’t pay attention very well. I’ve places to go and people to kill. The boy gets a needle full of air, which has to be the cleanest way I’ve killed anyone in ages.” He shot a finger gun at Michael, whose eyes were beginning to tear. “You’re welcome.”

  Dr. Horvat stroked the killer’s arm. “Do we have to harm the boy? I’m sure he wouldn’t be so stupid as to talk while we have the detective under our control. And even if he was that dumb, I could make him more pliable, join him in the ranks—”

  “No!” Wainwright seethed and looked like he might take a swing at the doctor.

  Horvat didn’t flinch.

  “No,” he said again much softer. “I’m sorry, dear, but you know I need this.”

  “But he’s just a ki—”

  Wainwright snapped. “A kid that knows too much!”

  As before, the rage came and went. He massaged Dr. Horvat’s shoulders. “Honey, he’s seen our faces, has a pretty good idea what’s going on here, and is a perfect pawn to sacrifice in this chess game with the FBI. It’s my move, and it’s time I made it.”

  The doctor sighed and hovered over Sam. As Sam’s eyes filled with tears, and as she strained to rip her arms free of the zip ties, a sharp pain bit into her neck. Horvat had injected the strange concoction as lithe and quiet as a cat on the prowl. Sam’s eyelids flickered and her head began to reel. A crash came to her right, and Michael was on his side, his body thrashing so violently that he was bound to wrench a shoulder out of its socket or cut through to his ankle joint if his binds remained intact. Foam spewed from his mouth.

  “I barely even touched him,” Wainwright said as he watched the boy flop.

  Sam slung her head onto her shoulder, her every movement an effort. “Ung... ung-tie him.”

  Dr. Horvat crouched beside Michael, a scalpel appearing in her hands. She cut away his binds. “The boy appears to be epileptic. I attempted to treat him for a similar seizure not two nights ago.” She turned him on his side and lay down beside him, scooping his head under her arm as if she were cuddling with him.

  “What are you doing?” Wainwright stood over her, his face awash with amusement.

  “Making sure he doesn’t crack his skull against the floor.”

  “What’s it matter? I’m just going to kill him anyway.”

  Sam giggled. Drool spilled from her mouth. “Not a... not a seigshure. Vishions. He shees futshures.” She cackled, unable to stop talking, the words spilling out before she could focus on what she was saying. “More value than me, that’s for shh... shure.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Michael has experienced enough visions to recognize them from the beginning. There are two types—visions in which his future self is present and those where he is not. Both start like waking from deep sleep, his sight blurry as it adjusts to light, his other senses dull from lack of use. Time accelerates faster than an airplane, his sight coming into focus with it at an almost heightened state. But in the visions where his future self is not physically present, so, too, does Michael lack the sense of touch—a ghostly watcher of wicked deeds, trapped in an ethereal plane others can neither see nor hear, unable to impact the events fate or God or his own subconscious deems necessary to show him.

  Those visions are actually less terrifying. In the other, he is an unwilling participant. While he can move as if in possession of his own, albeit somewhat older, body. He can feel everything, do anything, be responsible and harbor guilt, or hurt and be hurt. Which is why he momentarily confuses the latter with the former.

  Michael can’t move. He thinks he might be paralyzed. The thought sends a chill up his spine, raising all the hairs on his neck. Panic threatens to whip his thoughts into scrambled eggs. His appendages are useless. He can’t even wiggle a toe, never mind lift his head off the dewy grass. His eyes move in their sockets, but on his side, he can’t see a damn thing out of his left eye beyond spears of thin green grass and the water droplets clinging to them. The scent of damp earth fills his nostrils, not unpleasant, fresh like a field after a summer rain. The only sound belongs to cicadas chirping out their nightly mating song.

  What good can I do with this if I can’t see anything? But his right eye can see more. He focuses on learning what he can about his environment, and his pulse ticks down half a beat. Unfamiliar bleachers, painted white and wooden, with those dangerous gaps between each row that Michael didn’t think existed anymore; a starless night sky lit up by stadium lights too bright to stare into; a scoreboard standing to the right of the bleachers, Go Sabres or something similar written on it. Much closer, a line of chalk runs at a diagonal out of sight.

  A thump and a groan silences the night critters. A slap follows, then bodies crashing only a foot from Michael’s face. Two people, both with short white hair, each with hands around the other’s neck, strangle each other. The bigger man on top has better leverage and position. He digs his thumbs into the other’s neck, likely crushing the Adam’s apple and windpipe.

  The slender figure below him wheezes, head turning toward Michael. He gasps, seeing no man at all but Sam. Her hair is cut short and styled up in an unfamiliar rounded coif. And the color is as silver as a coin, making her look older than her years. Her face, too, shows signs of aging, with wrinkles where she never had them before. Whether they are due to exertion or the passage of time, Michael cannot tell.

  He tries to reach out for her, tries to scream for help, but he can do neither. Sam rakes at the man’s eyes then throws punches into his jaw, but for all her efforts, she cannot break his hold. Michael can only watch as Sam fights on, much longer than he thinks possible, dragging out the inevitable with every last bit of fight she can muster.

  He cries as her hands fall by her sides. Her face tilts toward him, lips parted as if to let her soul escape, eyes open and filled with the knowledge of what is to come—for her and for Michael.

  The man grunts and rises to his knees. His face is not immediately recognizable, yet as he glowers down at Michael, it is somehow familiar. Sweat drips from his temples. He wipes his hands on his pants and shuffles toward Michael. Resting on his forearms and breathing heavily, he plops down inches from Michael’s face. So close that, for all the differences and only meeting the man once before, Michael knows who he has to be—the man with the needle, the man who must have touched him. The man with a city burning in his eyes, a vision he yearns to make reality.

  But on recognizing the killer in a vision in which he himself is present, Michael’s fears actually begin to retreat. Although disabled, he knows he cannot be dead, and he couldn’t have been killed any time between his capture and this moment, whenever the events are supposed to occur. This realization comes with a bittersweet sense of hope—he will survive whatever is happening to him at Brentworth, if only for a little while.

  His teeth chatter, and he bites into his cheek. A pain in his shoulder rises with a sob in his throat.

  The needle man smiles. “Oh, don’t worry, my little shit stain of a friend. I won’t do you nearly as quickly.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “So...” Jimmy stared at the mummy-wrapped face of the federal agent he knew only as the Bandage Man. “Do you actually need that face get-up, or do you just have a toilet paper fetish?�
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  The agent scoffed. “Quit wasting my time, kid. You said you needed to talk, so talk.”

  Jimmy crossed his arms. He had important information. He knew stuff this idiot would want to know. Valuable information, which he would share in exchange for his and Tessa’s improved conditions.

  “I met with a friend of yours earlier—Special Agent Frank Spinney.”

  “That—” The Bandage Man threw up his hands and growled. He started to pace the length of their meeting place, the same room the Bandage Man had dragged him into the night before. The empty room was the agent’s hiding place near the kids’ hall, a fact that only added to his creepiness.

  “Is he trying to blow my cover?” He jabbed the tip of his finger into Jimmy’s sternum. “Is he trying to get you killed?”

  “Michael Turcotte’s in trouble.” Jimmy pulled down the tail of his shirt. “Detective Reilly too. I’m not sure if you know these people, but—”

  “Sam?” The agent grabbed the front of Jimmy’s shirt and balled it in his fists, wrinkling everything Jimmy had just straightened. “Sam’s in trouble? And her boy? How?”

  Jimmy knocked the Bandage Man’s hands away. “Your partner said he’s got them. He said you would know who he is.”

  The Bandage Man resumed his pacing, stroking his chin and muttering to himself. “Where?” he blurted. He looked as if he might grab Jimmy again but didn’t. “Did Frank say where he had them?”

  “Here... somewhere. They were captured in the woods out back. He wasn’t able to see where they took them, but he doesn’t think they’ve been shipped out.”

  “That’s impossible.” The Bandage Man muttered to himself like a proper psych ward resident. His pacing became feverish. “I’ve been over every inch of this place, and I still haven’t seen him. Not once. I know he’s here, but-but-but I need more time, I need more—”

  He froze. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. As he straightened, all his nervous energy seemed to evaporate. “I have to help Sam and her boy, even if that means all this time has been for nothing.”

  Then he grabbed Jimmy’s shoulders and locked eyes with him. “Did Frank tell you what he planned to do?”

  Jimmy frowned. “He said he was going to send an army in here and level the place, but he knew what that would mean for Sam and Michael.”

  The Bandage Man didn’t need to ask what Frank had meant by that. The shake that ran through the agent’s body confirmed that he’d inferred the same thing Jimmy had when Frank had told him the plan.

  “How much time?”

  “He said he’d give you three hours while he locked this place and all roads out down, then he’s lighting Brentworth up. Said you were his only option for anything stealthy.” Jimmy shrugged. “Whatever that means. He said he left you supplies and a new burner phone in the usual spot.”

  “All right. Thanks, kid.” The Bandage Man took a deep breath, then he crept past Jimmy toward the door. “You ready?”

  “Ready?” Jimmy’s brow furrowed. “Me? Ready for what?”

  “If I get caught, they’re going to easily tie my actions to the fact that an FBI agent came to see someone here today. You’re no longer safe here. I’m sorry, kid. Frank should not have put you at risk, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have if he wasn’t truly desperate.” The agent cracked open the door and peeked out. “So, you’re coming with me.”

  “Where?”

  For the first time in the short while Jimmy had known him, he saw something almost resembling a smile form in the crease between the bandages. “We’re busting out of this joint.”

  Jimmy frowned. “How?” The idea sounded great, in theory. Security inside their ward was perhaps criminally lax, the hospital obviously not caring if the whack jobs tore each other apart. But every door leading to the main building or outside was either badge-accessed or guarded, sometimes both. And though Jimmy knew from their little skirmish the other day that the Bandage Man was stronger and scrappier than he looked, the two of them were no match for some of the gorilla-sized security guards and orderlies that stood between them and freedom.

  The Bandage Man reached down the front of his pants then pulled out a laminated ID badge. On the front was a picture of the Missing Link. Printed beside the photo was the name Jeb Abercrombie.

  Jimmy shook his head. “I guess there weren’t too many places for you to hide that, huh?”

  The Bandage Man shrugged. “Not where I could keep it handy. Anyway, we’ve got to move quickly. Frank will have left me a care package. We know Sam and Michael aren’t being held anywhere we have access to, so we’ll have to sneak into the back rooms. Not all of the staff can be in Wainwright’s employ, but we’ll stick out like sore thumbs traipsing through areas we don’t belong. If anyone sees us—” He shook his head. “Best not to be seen at all.”

  Jimmy shifted uncomfortably as the Bandage Man groaned then continued talking, more to himself than Jimmy. “We’re outnumbered. Outgunned. I don’t like this, Frank, but what choice have you left me?”

  He gazed at Jimmy with eyes that seemed to tremble, and the uncertainty sent a chill through Jimmy. “If we don’t find them, they’re as good as dead. We’ll have to pray we get lucky, find them, and hole up somewhere until the cavalry arrives.”

  He grabbed Jimmy’s wrist, his grip tighter than a collar, then yanked him into the hallway. “Stay quiet, stay close, and stay behind me.”

  Jimmy wrenched his arm free. “I got it, man.”

  The Bandage Man grunted, then hurried down the hall in a half crouch, stopping at every intersection to make sure the coast was clear before proceeding. When he reached the men’s room, he gently pushed open the door and stepped inside. Jimmy checked the hall both ways then crept into the bathroom behind the agent.

  Checking each stall, the Bandage Man cleared the restroom before dragging an aluminum trash can underneath the room’s only window a little more than six feet up. After laying the trash can on its side, the agent kicked off his slippers then balanced on the cylindrical surface like a lumberjack in a logrolling competition. The can rocked and crinkled under his feet, and the cover shot off with a loud din.

  Both he and Jimmy froze, listening for any response in the corridor. After a moment of bated breath, the Bandage Man opened the window four inches, as far as it would go. Vertical bars striped any escape that way anyway, though the window sat at ground level, knotted roots from the hedges in front of it partially obstructing the view to a grassy lawn.

  “We aren’t going out that way,” Jimmy said, stating the obvious in a hushed voice. He hoped the agent would explain what they were doing in the bathroom in the first place.

  But the Bandage Man just groaned as he stretched his arm through the bars, his fingers clawing at the dirt. “Got it!”

  He turned, smiling at Jimmy as he showed him the frayed and dirt-stained end of a nylon rope. Jimmy saw the agent’s smile vanish before he heard the door swinging open behind him. He turned and looked up into the eyes of Jeb Abercrombie, aka the Missing Link.

  For a second, no one moved. Then Link reached for the whistle that hung around his neck. Jimmy reacted without a thought, rushing the much larger man. He slammed his shoulder into Link’s stomach before he could blow the whistle. It shot out of the Neanderthal’s mouth with a whoosh of air, emitting the slightest chirp as it fell back against his chest.

  Link doubled over but snapped back up, a sneer curling up his mouth, nostrils flaring with rage. As Jimmy backpedaled, his mind grasping for his next move, Link’s hand, large enough to palm an overinflated basketball, wrapped over his skull. The hand thrust Jimmy’s head left, and his body followed. He flew to his side and crashed into a urinal, insult added to the sharp pain shooting through his shoulder because it was the second time he’d been intimate with the inside of a piss pot. The anger filled him with energetic hate, and he gnashed his teeth as he again charged the much larger Link.

  His fist flew out wildly, and he hit his foe with at least half
a dozen solid body shots. But the orderly shrugged them off as easily as if they were flea bites. He spun Jimmy around, hooked his arms under Jimmy’s, and locked his hands behind Jimmy’s neck in a full nelson. Pain shot through Jimmy’s collar bones. It hurt even more when Link used it to lift Jimmy off his feet. He tried to struggle free, kick his heels against his captor, but every movement caused stabbing pain in his neck and shoulders. Lifting his head in spite of the pain, he could just raise his eyes enough to see the Bandage Man standing roughly eight feet away, arm raised and holding a gun.

  “Put it down!” Link roared, but both his arms and his voice trembled. Whether it was fear or the strain of his hold, Jimmy couldn’t tell. “Give me the gun, and we can forget this ever happened.”

  The Bandage Man tossed a ziplock bag with a rope looped through it into the sink. Something was still in the bag, but Jimmy couldn’t tell what it was. It thudded against the basin as it hit. The gun the Bandage Man had obtained from the bag—a gift from Agent Spinney, Jimmy assumed—had obviously been the more pressing item.

  “I don’t think so.” The Bandage Man stepped closer. His hands showed no sign of infirmity as he aimed the gun at Link’s face. Jimmy assumed he had a clear shot. Link towered at least a foot and a half above him. Sure, Jimmy, lifted as he was, shielded much of Link’s body, but that mega pumpkin-sized head must have been an easy target at such close range.

  “Shoot him!” Jimmy grunted. He squealed as his neck wrenched forward and the pressure against his shoulders amplified.

  “What’s your role in all of this, Abercrombie?” The Bandage Man took another step forward. “I haven’t pegged you as the brightest bulb or even a good guy, but brainwashing and murder? How’d you fall so low?”

  “What are you talking about?” Link’s grip tightened and he laughed, but the question came out shakily. “Murder? I haven’t killed anyone. Crazy talk from a crazy man. I’m just here doing my job. I’m not the one holding a gun and ranting like a madman. How’d you get that in here anyway?”