The Consultant

by Little,Bentley

  They sat there for several minutes, speculating about the purpose of this “retreat,” knowing that BFG had to have ulterior motives, but unable to come up with a plausible reason for why it had been sprung upon them so suddenly, why it had to take place right here, right now. Craig was about to ask the other two about their speed conversations, when a fleeting shadow passed over Elaine’s face as she looked behind him. There was a sharp, slashing intake of breath, and he turned quickly to look over his shoulder but saw nothing. Elaine’s eyes were wide. “What was that?”

  Phil had seen it, too, though apparently not as clearly. “I don’t know. It moved too fast.”

  “An animal, maybe?” The hope in her voice could not mask the fear.

  Craig peered around the small meadow. “I didn’t see anything. And if there was an animal, where did it go? There’s only the one entrance. Unless it jumped over the wall.”

  “It just kind of—”

  “Disappeared,” Phil finished for her.

  This time Craig did see something. A dark flash that sped behind Elaine. He wasn’t sure where it had come from or where it went, saw it only for the second that it was in his sightline, and when he tried to look in the direction it had been travelling, he saw nothing, as though it had vanished into the air.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Craig said.

  There was no argument. They each grabbed an extra bottled water from the table to take along, and headed out the way they’d come.

  In the sky above them, the sun went down.

  ****

  Austin wasn’t back by dinnertime.

  He’d warned her that this might happen. The management retreat was scheduled to last two days, and he told her he’d probably be able to get out of it, but he’d also cautioned that he might end up stuck there with everyone else. So she’d known this was a possibility.

  She just hadn’t allowed herself to believe it.

  As she’d done obsessively since first finding that horrid snow globe, Rachel Matthews walked through the first floor of the house, carefully examining all of the globes in her collection.

  She didn’t like Austin being gone. He’d told her she could invite her sister over. Or a friend. He’d even offered to station a security guard outside the residence or have one of the help spend the night if she wanted. But none of that had seemed necessary.

  In the daytime.

  However, now it was night, and she was all alone, and just the thought that she might run across a snow globe that portrayed perverted scenes like the other one gave her the willies. She’d always loved this house, but tonight it seemed too big, and everywhere she looked she saw hiding places where other snow globes could be stashed.

  The doorbell rang.

  Rachel jumped. The doorbell? That was impossible. The gate was locked and the perimeter alarm set. The motion detector should have spotted anyone making his way up the drive to the front of the house.

  Making his way?

  How did she know it was a him?

  Because she did. She was afraid she knew exactly who it was, and that was why she did not answer the door, why she hurried quickly upstairs, locking herself in the bedroom. She ran over to the bed. Her first impulse was to call 911, and after only a second’s hesitation, she decided to do exactly that. The worst that could happen was that the police would come out and discover it was a false alarm, which might be embarrassing, but at least she would know that she was safe.

  She picked up the phone off the nightstand.

  There was no dial tone.

  He had cut the lines.

  Her breath coming in ragged gasps, heart thudding in her chest, Rachel realized that her cell phone was downstairs, on the hall tree, in her purse.

  The doorbell rang again.

  She quickly went over her options. There were only two as she saw it. She could go downstairs and get her phone. Or stay up here and wait him out. In her mind, she imagined pulling the phone out of her purse just as he opened the front door and grabbed her. It was safer to remain where she was, Rachel decided. At least it would make an attack more difficult, because even if he did get inside the house, he would have to find her, and then he would have to break down the bedroom door to reach her.

  Just in case, she started looking around for a weapon. Hurrying into the bathroom, she opened the top drawer, dug through the jumbled items and took out the scissors she sometimes used to trim her bangs.

  She walked back into the bedroom feeling slightly more confident. If he—

  The Consultant

  —really did intend to harm her, he would have to find a way past the locked and bolted front door, then past the locked bedroom door. The second he entered the bedroom, she would be on him with the scissors, so it seemed pretty unlikely that he would be able to do much damage.

  Still, she was frightened, and she took up a place to the left of the door, ready in case he should come in.

  The front bell had stopped ringing, and for a brief moment she allowed herself to hope that he had gone away, but then came the sound of a crash from somewhere downstairs. And another. And another.

  He was destroying her snow globes!

  Furious, Rachel turned the lock, threw open the door and hurried down the steps, scissors held high. She expected to see him picking up her globes and throwing them to the floor, but instead he stood in the center of the living room as around him, one by one, pieces of her prized collection floated up from the shelves and tables on which they were sitting and then dropped, shattering. He turned to look at her as she entered the doorway, and the scissors were pulled from her hand by some unseen force, the pressure yanking her index and middle fingers back hard enough to make her cry out.

  The scissors clattered to the floor, one last snow globe fell, and the consultant walked slowly toward her. “Mrs. Matthews,” he said, smiling. “I’m so glad we’ve found this time to talk.”

  “Talk? About what? The way you’re destroying hundreds of dollars’ worth of antiques?” She was aware that her voice had come out weak and wobbly.

  “No. I want to talk about CompWare. I understand you’re one of the majority shareholders.”

  “I have nothing to do with that,” she tried to assure him, backing up. “Austin’s the one who—”

  “Your name is on everything.”

  “Only for tax purposes.”

  “So you’re useless,” he said, talking more to himself than her. “Just as I thought.”

  “I’m—”

  He looked at her, and her vision grew foggy, the room swirling about her, everything becoming hazy and indistinct. She wanted to run away but found that she could not move. Her body felt as though it had been encased in cement; her mind could not command even a single muscle. Gradually, her vision cleared. She was frozen in place next to a smiling Santa Claus and a gang of happy children, all of them encased within a glass dome. The world beyond the glass was a distorted blur, though she could make out specific elements of her living room, blown up to gargantuan size.

  She understood where she was.

  What she was.

  And around her fell the snow.

  ****

  Where was Craig?

  Angie was trying not to seem worried in front of Dylan, but she was worried. Craig always called if he was going to be late, and he was so late tonight that she’d had to feed Dylan dinner before his father came home. They always ate dinner together. She’d called his number at work several times, called his cell phone even more, but in both instances she’d been transferred directly to voice mail. And he had yet to call back.

  Something was wrong. She knew it deep in her bones, and though she pretended nothing was the matter as she read Dylan a story, in her imagination she saw Craig dead in a car crash, lying on the side of the road, his head cracked open and bleeding into the asphalt.

  The doorbell rang. She was so tense and keyed up that the sound made her cry out and drop the book she was reading.

  Dylan laughed. �
�It’s only the doorbell, Mommy.”

  She was already rushing across the room, her heart pounding crazily, certain that it would be a policeman on the porch, a policeman sent over to tell her that her husband—

  She unlocked and pulled open the door.

  Regus Patoff stood behind the screen, smiling at her. “Hello, Mrs. Horne.”

  She slammed the door in his face. Gasping for air, she looked frantically around to make sure Dylan was still in sight. He stood in the center of the room, confused and frightened.

  “Go away!” Angie shouted through the closed door.

  “I’m here on behalf of your husband, Mrs. Horne.”

  Craig’s dead!

  The thought, unbidden, flashed into her mind, where it would not be dislodged.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Your husband just wanted me to let you know that he will be gone for the next two days. He is on a retreat, along with other senior staff members.”

  Against her better judgment, she opened the door a crack. “Why didn’t he call?”

  The consultant smiled. “Because I wouldn’t let him.”

  A chill passed through her.

  “He should be fine.” The consultant was still smiling. “If he does what he’s supposed to do. May I come in?”

  “No.” She fixed him with a laser stare, her face between the wooden door and the screen door, pitching her voice low so Dylan wouldn’t hear. “And if anything happens to him…”

  “It’ll be his own fault.” The consultant chuckled, pretending to tip an invisible hat in her direction. “Have a nice night. And day. And night. And day. And try not to think about it.”

  He turned, making his way down the porch steps and up the walkway to the street.

  ****

  There was light in the maze, though Craig was not sure of its source. Directly above, he could see the stars and, looming above the wall on the left, the illuminated windows of the CompWare building’s upper stories, but there were no lamps or bulbs of any sort along the walls of the maze.

  Still, they could easily see where they were going, though some areas were darker than others, and the three of them remained on edge, ready for the return of that shadow-thing that had flashed through the meadow. It continued to surprise him that they had not encountered more people. Dozens of senior staff members were roaming the partitioned campus, so it would have been only natural to run into some of them now and then, but the place was like a ghost town.

  And then it wasn’t.

  Another pathway intersected the one they were on, and four supervisors from Finance passed in front of them. “Hey,” Phil said in greeting, but the others ignored him and kept walking.

  “Shouldn’t have had garlic for lunch,” he joked.

  At a dead-end up ahead, they came across Daisy Chung from Phil’s department, naked on her hands and knees, grunting like an animal as Garrett Holcomb entered her from behind with vigorous, violent thrusts. Both looked over as the three of them approached, but neither seemed to mind being seen, and they kept on doing what they were doing as though no one else was there. In another alcove, two men Craig had seen around but whose names he didn’t know, were engaged in a vicious fight, their clothes ripped, both of their faces bloody, one man biting into the arm of another, who was repeatedly kicking the first man in the groin.

  “What the fuck,” Phil said.

  “Knock it off!” Elaine shouted at them. “You’re at work, not in a cage fight!”

  The men ignored her.

  “Should we try to stop it?” Craig wondered.

  Phil shook his head. “Not our problem.”

  The situation had deteriorated far more than any of them would have thought possible, and it occurred to Craig for the first time that someone might die tonight.

  Maybe that was what the consultant wanted.

  You’ll know what to do, Robards had said.

  Apparently, that was truer for some people than others. The three of them were still wandering around aimlessly while others were engaged in acts of increasing debauchery.

  What were things going to be like in another 24 hours?

  And where was Robards?

  They needed to stay away from all this, wait it out. Already, though, his stomach was starting to growl, and he wondered if they were going to be provided with dinner or breakfast or lunch, or anything other than bottled water.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Elaine said disgustedly.

  “I wonder, if we just left, if anyone would notice,” Phil mused. “I don’t see any cameras anywhere. Or guards. Why don’t we try to make our way back to the beginning, go home and get a good night’s sleep, then come back later?”

  They were so lost and the maze so impossibly large that Craig doubted they could find their way out, but he liked the plan and so did Elaine. The face of the CompWare building allowed them to get their bearings, and from it they figured out in which direction they should be heading. The building wasn’t visible from all points within the maze, but they could probably see it often enough to use it for navigation, and they backtracked a few yards, then entered a passageway to their right that led to another path heading in the direction they wanted to go.

  Turning a corner, they passed an alcove taken up by what looked like a dining room table. Sitting on top of the table was a paper grocery bag with two holes cut out for eyes and a too-large smile drawn underneath in felt pen.

  Next to it was an ax.

  Elaine’s voice was hushed. “Is someone supposed to pick that up?”

  “Not me,” Craig assured her.

  “Me, either,” Phil said. He looked toward the table. “But I’m wondering if we shouldn’t tear up that sack and hide the ax somewhere. Things are getting kind of crazy here. Someone might actually be tempted to, you know, do something with them.”

  “Go ahead,” Elaine encouraged him, and he ripped up the bag, dropping the pieces on the grass. Tipping over the table so the top side was leaning against the wall, he hid the ax behind it.

  “Let’s go.”

  Ahead was one of the gloomier segments of the maze. It wasn’t so dark that they couldn’t see, but it was definitely in shadow, and when Craig saw someone walking toward them, he could not immediately tell who it was.

  He had a bad feeling about that.

  Phil and Elaine must have had similar thoughts because they all slowed down, waiting in the light for the figure to approach.

  It was a man with the face of Alfred E. Neuman.

  Craig experienced a tingle of fear. He had never liked the Mad magazine mascot. He knew the figure was supposed to be comical, but there was something about that perpetually grinning gap-toothed mouth that had always creeped him out and set him on edge.

  It was impossible to tell who was behind the mask. Craig thought he might be able to deduce an identity from the body type, but the tall powerfully built man’s physique did not look like that of any software company executive with whom Craig was familiar.

  The figure walked by them without stopping, without slowing, without acknowledging their existence.

  Craig looked at Phil and Elaine without speaking, then continued on, leading the way. The passage passed through the shadows, then turned left briefly before heading back in the direction from which they’d come. He looked for a cross-corridor that would set them back on course, and when he found one, he took it.

  And immediately stopped.

  On the ground before him was the bloody body of a man.

  Robards.

  The guide’s face was contorted in an expression of agony, mouth and eyes both wide open. The body lay on its side, unmoving, blood still flowing from fresh wounds and seeping into the grass. One of the legs had been almost severed but was still attached to the thigh by a thin strip of muscle and skin. Organs spilled out from a hacked open stomach. Neither of the arms had hands.

  An ax lay on the ground at Robards’ feet, its blade glistening with red, and, next to
the ax, stood a man with a grocery sack over his head, a sack with two holes cut out for eyes and an over-large smile drawn on the brown paper.

  How was that possible? Phil had torn up the bag.

  Maybe there were more of them. Maybe they were scattered around the maze, just waiting to be picked up and used.

  Craig took all of this in, seeing it, thinking it, processing it in seconds, then he was rushing forward and so was Phil, both of them acting instinctively to subdue the man before he could reach down and pick up the ax again. Phil, faster and more lithe, ran to the side and, in a move he must have stolen from movies or TV cop shows, grabbed one of the man’s arms and then the other, twisting them behind him. The man did not seem to be putting up a fight, was docilely going along, but Craig punched him in the stomach just to be on the safe side and ripped the bag off his head, staring into a horrifyingly familiar face.

  Austin Matthews.

  THIRTY EIGHT

  The next several hours were a blur. All phones were supposed to have been confiscated, but someone somehow had called the police, and the campus and parking lot were awash in pulsing blue and red light from the phalanx of patrol cars that had descended upon CompWare. By the time a stunned Craig, Phil and Elaine had staggered out of the maze, pushing a submissive Matthews before them, half of the retreat participants were huddled in a confused mass to the side of the entrance, one of the women topless, several of the men bruised and battered.

  It was nearly two in the morning by the time Craig arrived home. Angie had been asleep, but the sound of the unlocking and opening door awakened her, and she greeted him in the living room with a baseball bat in hand. She put it down gratefully when she saw that it was him, and hurried to give him a hug. “I thought you were Patoff.”

  “No.”

  “He came by to tell me that you were at a retreat and wouldn’t be back for days.”