Speaking Evil

by Jason Parent

  Michael dropped the book at that, springing up to a sitting position. “So we’re what? Bait?”

  “That’s not funny, Bruce.” Sam crossed her arms again. “You’re scaring Michael. Frank would never use us like that.”

  It was Bruce’s turn to scoff. “He thinks like you do—that I was the mole. But I never knew Michael was living with you. I couldn’t have been responsible for the break-in at your apartment. Someone else must have told him that.”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “Or he had someone follow me home, got it out of Tessa, etcetera.”

  “Believe me or don’t. Just be ready. Might want to give the boy a piece too.” He glared at Michael, a wildness in Bruce’s eyes that reminded him of the maniac he’d just escaped. “Just don’t kill them all, kid. I need one of them alive.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Jimmy didn’t know what to do with his newfound freedom. Residing at the halfway house under an assumed name, he wasn’t supposed to leave. But the parole officer, Weston something-or-other, had taken a liking to him, had even gone so far as to call him a hero. Without disclosing his identity, the newspapers had run several stories concerning events that took place at Brentworth three days earlier, including the terrifying ordeal of three brave teenagers who fought their way through a hallway of deranged lunatics to escape with the help of police, saving three other patients in the process. Only two, once Tessa dies. The papers had left out the parts about the innocents they’d failed to save—Terry, that nurse who’d had her head bashed in, and the four dead people in the rec room. Those facts were too troublesome to add to a feel-good piece.

  Anyway, Weston must have put two and two together and guessed Jimmy had been one of the teenagers mentioned in the articles. Jimmy saw no sense in denying it, particularly if it curried him favor with the warden of his new prison. Weston allowed him to come and go as he pleased, practically encouraged him to do so, so long as he was back before the evening meal and curfew.

  Jimmy had stayed inside on the first day. On the second, he went for a walk, feeling like a stranger in his own city. Everything seemed different somehow. But Fall River was the same as it had always been. He was the one who’d changed. Everything since he’d shot Glenn Rodrigues, which seemed like a lifetime ago, had shaped him into a new person. A man, he supposed, and maybe not a good one.

  One newspaper had told his story as one of redemption—the teen with a “troubled past” rising in the face of adversity or some other garbage. But if helping Michael and those children escape Brentworth had made up for all the terrible things he’d done, then he couldn’t figure out why he still felt so dirty—like he could wash his skin under scalding hot water for hours, scrub it with wire mesh until a layer grated off like parmesan cheese, and still never remove the constant stain. The blood on his hands.

  But it wasn’t guilt. No, the people he’d hurt had deserved it. Every last one of the sons of bitches. The cloud over him wasn’t placed there by himself but by society and by allowing his eyes to see himself as others might see him.

  He slunk back into the home after only being out an hour. And when he woke the third day, he couldn’t think of any reason to step out again. He thought about visiting his parents, who upon seeing him, might put things together the same as Weston had. But he wouldn’t know what to say to them and felt like they owed him an apology for thinking he owed them one. There was Michael, too, somewhere out in that city, maybe lost to him as a friend. And then there was Tessa, dying if not dead already and probably off-limits to visitors.

  His body felt like a hollowed out tree. Tessa had taken a bullet for Michael, for Sam, for him. He decided he would try to see her anyway.

  Getting to Charlton Memorial had taken him nearly forty-five minutes on foot, and that had been the easy part. Sneaking into the ICU had been only slightly more difficult. He had arrived during family visiting hours and followed a couple while they signed in, entering behind them as if he were their son. When he broke away from the pair, he walked by nurses and doctors with his head down, all of them much too busy to give him any real notice, until he found Tessa’s room.

  The only truly hard part of his visit was seeing Tessa lying as she was, her every breath a struggle, clinging to life through various tubes and apparatuses connected to her every limb and orifice. Machines beeped and whirred. Other than the heart monitor, Jimmy didn’t know what any of them did. He wanted to reach for her hand and hold it, to be there for her when she left their world for whatever came next. He’d been raised Catholic—like all good Irish children, his mother would say. But somewhere along the way, he’d stopped believing. Nevertheless, he sent up a prayer for Tessa’s sake.

  And so he sat there in the dark on the floor beside her bed, remembering the night not too long ago when they’d done the same beside his. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the man in the lab coat and surgical mask until a gun was pointed at his face.

  CHAPTER 33

  An uneasy silence fell over Sam, Michael, and Bruce as they each claimed a corner of the room and refused to make eye contact with one another. She took inventory of the many emotions fighting for control of her body—melancholy, anger, anxiety, and even compassion battled to be king of the hill. In the end, a combination of fear and disgust won, and she sneered at her former partner, a man actually willing to use them as bait to catch a killer. Tears filled her eyes. Something I would have done with Michael not even a year ago.

  Disgust turned to shame, and she hid her face in her hands. What am I doing with my life? With his?

  A knock came at the door. Bruce’s hand went for his gun.

  “It’s me, Frank.” The deadbolt snapped back. “I’m coming in.”

  Sam stepped behind the door, gun in hand, unable to see who’d entered until the door swung closed. The tall, slender figure of Frank Spinney was unmistakable. He was alone.

  She holstered her weapon and stepped around him slowly so as not to startle him. “Any news?”

  Frank’s gaze fell. “Nothing.” He glanced at Bruce, his eyes lingering half a second too long on the burned, unbandaged face he likely hadn’t seen in ages before noticing Bruce’s trigger-happy gun hand. “You can relax. I haven’t been compromised.”

  “One can never be too sure,” Bruce said, but his hand did fall loosely by his side.

  “How can there be no news?” Sam huffed, tucking her hair behind her ears. “These patients can’t be in a constant state of hypnosis. They must be hard to keep wrangled. Not only that, Wainwright and Horvat’s faces are all over the news. They have to pop up sooner or later.”

  Frank sighed. “I’m guessing they’re already long gone.”

  Bruce snickered and began to pace.

  Sam shot him a glare. She had no time for his stupidity. “You got something to say, then say it.”

  “I told you, he’ll come for us.” He stopped pacing and stared at Frank. “You know this guy like I do. He never finishes a game unless he’s won. I think this time, that means me dead. Maybe all of us dead.”

  He scratched his chin. After a pause, he added, “Well, maybe not Michael. He’ll catch and release him so he has someone to toy with later.”

  Sam slapped him. It felt good, deserved even, but the feeling quickly passed as she noticed the sickly pallor in Michael’s cheeks. And at that moment, she pitied them both—her son, who would live in fear until they caught Wainwright, and her former partner, who’d lost something deeper than skin in battle.

  Bruce’s face reddened from more than just the strike. “Oh, wake up, you two!” He jabbed a finger in Frank’s face. “You! You know better!” Twirling to Sam, he added, “And you, you I taught better! He will come for us!”

  “Well, if he does, then that can only mean one thing—the mole is one of us.” Frank rose to his full height, his cheeks flushing. “And I, for one, am not ready to believe that one of us could ever be that evil. He used you, Bruce. Played with your head. And we never even knew he was doing it. You’re angry. You
have every right to be. Hell, I’m angry! But the only people that know about this place are the four of us, Tagliamonte, and—” He held up a finger. “Do you hear that?”

  Bruce frowned. “What in the...?”

  Sam cocked her head and listened. A low rumble, like the beginnings of an earthquake, rankled her nerve. The sound grew louder and with it an indefinable dread, like eyes watching from the shadows while walking through a dark alley. The menace quickly amplified as the entire building shook.

  “What’s happening?” Michael rose from the couch, hands out at his sides.

  Glasses rattled on shelves. Car horns blared outside. A sound like dynamite blasting a tunnel through a mountain came from nearby, then another happened just outside. Every hair on Sam’s neck stood on end.

  “Sam?” Michael called, just loud enough to be heard over the din.

  “Get down!” she shouted as she dove to cover Michael.

  A deafening roar came from behind her as splinters of wood and plaster bombarded her back. She hugged Michael closer, shielding his head. Powdery dust filled the air, stinging her eyes and making her cough. She tried to hold her breath, which only made her cough worse.

  Slowly, the roar died to a whimper. The dust began to clear. “You okay?” she asked, rising off of Michael.

  He nodded but stayed right where he was, gaping.

  Sam stood and turned. Her head spun as she took in the wreckage. Where the left front of the safe house had been, open air filled the space. She swatted dust away with one hand as she coughed into the other. Bruce helped Frank up and out from under the front door. She followed the direction of the noise.

  Gasping, her heart thumped angrily against her ribs. A wrecking ball the size of a bus ricocheted off another building as it spun like the Earth on its axis, slowly teetering to the end of its pendulum swing. Sam struggled for words. “It-it-it’s coming back!”

  “This isn’t him,” Bruce muttered, a fresh cut on his forehead. “He likes up close and personal.”

  “You hear me?” Sam shouted. She grabbed Michael’s hand and pulled him toward the steps, or what remained of them, leading out of the building. She pushed Bruce toward them as she passed. If the door had given him a nasty hit, Frank snapped out of his stupor and ushered Bruce along.

  Missing their railing, the stairs creaked underfoot as Sam hurried Michael down them. But they held firm, Sam skipping every other one to race down the three flights to safety. As she busted out the building’s double front doors, a circular shadow the size of a manhole cover swung toward them, gaining speed and growing bigger.

  She started to her left as a bullet splintered the brick inches in front of her face. Whipping her neck to her right, she tried to spot the shooter when she should have been seeking cover.

  “They’re here!” Michael shouted, his hand slipping from her grasp. “Quick, back inside!” He pushed past Bruce and Frank, who’d drawn their weapons, and yanked open the right door as the one beside it shattered.

  “Michael, no!” Sam reached for him but was far too late. Two men in police uniforms and cigar-store Indian masks approached, still firing and apparently oblivious to the giant wrecking ball careening toward them all. Sam charged for the entrance but barely made it a step before Bruce and Frank each had an arm under hers and were toting her in the opposite direction.

  She fought and thrashed and screamed but still was driven away as the wrecking ball hit pavement behind the older man in the police uniform. It continued its forward momentum through him with a sickening crunch. Attached like a fly stuck to a swatter, the unknown brainwashing victim smashed into the building with the wrecking ball. It leveled the bottom of the structure, collapsing what remained of the upper floors on top of the devastation below. On top of Michael.

  CHAPTER 34

  Jimmy didn’t recognize the kid, who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, standing next to that murderous psychopath. If he’d been a patient at Brentworth, Jimmy had never met him. He might have spat at Wainwright for enlisting someone so young if his mouth hadn’t been duct-taped shut.

  “I knocked down the building just like you asked me to,” a young boy said, beaming with pride. “It only took me, like um... one and a half tries!”

  “That’s impressive, Mitchell,” Wainwright said, tussling the boy’s hair. “I’m shocked, really. I didn’t think you could do it, even with Number Eight’s help.”

  The boy bristled. “I did it all by myself!”

  Wainwright chuckled. “Well, hopefully, you saved at least one or two of them for me.” At that, his smile wavered, but only for a second. “And you made it back here, which is more than I can say for the others. We’ll give them another half hour. Did they let you drive?”

  Mitchell pouted. “No, they only let me use the controller thing.” The boy could not stay sad. “It was so much fun!”

  “Did you say the line?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes Dr. Horvat happy. You want to make Dr. Horvat happy, don’t you? She gets so upset when she thinks you’re not part of the team, you know.”

  Jimmy groaned. They’re brainwashing the kids too.

  Mitchell crossed his arms. “It’s so stupid. Three little Indians out on a canoe. One tumbled overboard and then there were two.” He threw his arms up, exasperated. “It doesn’t make any sense. There wasn’t even any water anywhere near us.”

  “Yes, you’re too smart for your own good.” Wainwright laughed. “We’ll make you a star within this business yet.”

  He walked over to Jimmy, whose wrists were handcuffed to a pipe running along the ceiling, and shook his head. “Almost makes up for your mistake at the hospital.”

  “Jordan said you said to grab whatever boy showed up to see the girl.” Mitchell pointed at Jimmy. “That’s who showed up, so that’s who we got.”

  “Did you kill the girl?”

  “Uh... were we supposed to?”

  Wainwright frowned. “Mira, who’s this boy again?”

  “Jimmy Rafferty,” a woman’s voice came from another room. “He’s a patient at Brentworth. Or at least, he was.”

  Wainwright leaned forward, his breath warm and pungent on Jimmy’s cheek. “Well, kid, you’re part of this now. I didn’t think much of you showing up with my old pal Bruce and might have left you alone. Bigger fish to fry, as they say.” He sighed. “Alas, here we are. I don’t suppose you’re psychic, too, like the other one?”

  Wainwright tapped Jimmy’s cheek, waiting for an answer. Then he ripped the tape from his mouth. Jimmy’s face stung and his eyes teared, but he didn’t respond. He had no idea what the bastard had planned for him, but he wasn’t about to make anything easy for Wainwright. From the sound of things, it looked like Jimmy might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Should I kill him?” the sick bastard shouted to the doctor.

  “I could try to make him an Indian,” the doctor called back. “He seems like a good candidate—reasonably stable-minded. And our ranks have dwindled quite a bit.”

  “She makes a good point.” Wainwright tapped his chin. “Still, I’m partial to watching your intestines slide out of your opened belly like spaghetti through a wet paper bag.”

  Jimmy sneered. “Why would you have spaghetti in a wet paper bag?”

  “Touché.” Wainwright smiled broadly. “I like this kid,” he said to Mitchell, who looked up and smiled back.

  Returning his attention to Jimmy, he said, “Well? What would your vote be? Do we kill you or induct you?”

  Jimmy started to open his mouth to speak, then thought better of it, looking for the trap behind the words. Even if there was no trap, he wasn’t sure he wanted to live if it meant he was someone else’s puppet even part of the time. “Why don’t you take—”

  Wainwright punched him in the stomach. “Just kidding. You don’t get a vote.” He took a step toward the young boy. “I guess that means it’s up to you, Mitchell. Do we kill him or induct hi
m?”

  Mitchell curled up his cheek. “What does ‘induck’ mean?”

  “It means we make him one of us.”

  “Oh?” Mitchell’s face lit up. “You mean like another Indian. Yeah! Let’s do that!”

  Wainwright tucked his chin against his chest and quietly laughed. “Well, I guess there you have it.” He patted Jimmy’s cheek again. “It looks like you have a fine future ahead of yourself within our little organization. We’ve got a high turnover rate, but that just means there are a lot of opportunities for promotion. Welcome to the team!”

  CHAPTER 35

  Michael’s vision vacillated in and out of focus. A high-pitched tone resonated through his skull, drowning out all other sounds. He didn’t know if he was standing or lying there, what was up and what was down. His breaths came constricted, a heavy weight pressing down on him, yet he felt no pain.

  I’m paralyzed. His heart pistoned at the thought, causing more tightness in his chest. Oh, God. I must be paralyzed. Grunting he shot his arms forward, reaching for a square of light. They moved easily, and he moved easily, and that was a mixed bag of relief and anxiety. Not paralyzed, but... am I...

  The last thing he remembered was racing for the safe house’s back door and seeing an Indiana Jones-sized boulder racing after him. A spark of hope as he slammed through the door, the kind with the push bar that blessedly opened outward. The explosion of wood behind him. Diving to the ground, covering his head. Praying.

  Something had hit him in the back, then another something. Then a whole bunch of somethings, hitting him about the head and body. Sensation returned to his extremities as he recalled the bombardment. His head throbbed at a spot just above the back of his neck. Another something jabbed him in the leg just below his left butt cheek. All in all, though, his limbs seemed intact. Then he remembered how amputees felt like they could still feel their missing parts.