by Jack Kilborn
“Sue Corall.”
“Are you alone, Sue? Are there other people with you?”
“My husband, Larry.”
“Is your husband here?”
Sue didn’t answer, but her eyes glazed over.
“Sue?”
“I... I think he’s in the next cell. Jimmy... the hunchback... he... he keeps...”
Letti took the keys from Maria, who was staring at the cell door across the hallway.
I know that one. That’s my cell.
I’ll die before I’ll let them put me in there again.
“Oh... Christ.” Letti turned away from the door she just opened. Sue came waddling over, but Letti grabbed her shoulders, refusing to let her see.
“He’s my husband!” Sue implored.
“Sue... you really don’t...”
“Let me go!”
Letti allowed the woman to pass, and Maria made the mistake of following her into the room. The odor hit her first; feces and urine and rot.
But seeing was worse than smelling.
“Whoa,” Cam said.
Sue’s husband was lying on the dirt floor.
At least, what was left of him was.
The man was missing one leg, his left hand, half of his right arm, an ear and an eye. Badly stitched wounds on his torso spoke of other missing parts. His shoulders were also dislocated, cocked out at odd angles.
Strappado. This poor bastard.
Sue shrieked, falling on her knees next to her husband, cradling his head. He moaned at the tender action.
His teeth are gone, too.
Larry said something. Even without teeth, Maria got the gist of it.
“Kill... me. Please... kill... me.”
“Help him,” Sue cried. “Someone help him.”
Maria felt terrible for both of them, but she didn’t see how they’d be able to get him out of there. Larry was in too much pain to even turn his head. Besides, Maria had to find Felix, and fast. It could already be too late.
“He wants to die.” Everyone looked at Cam, who had come into the room. He had an oddly serene look on his face.
Sue shook her head. “No. No no no.”
“Please... kill... me.”
“We can get you help,” Sue implored. “We can get out of here, and get you help. Get you doctors.” Sue patted her belly. “This is your baby, Larry. Yours. They think it’s theirs, but I was pregnant when we came here.”
“I... want... to... die. Please...”
Sue clenched her fists and beat them against her thighs, moaning.
Cam knelt next to Sue. “You love your husband.”
Sue could barely speak through her sobbing. “More... more than anything.”
“Then you have to let him go.”
“No. God, no.”
Letti put her arm around Sue’s shoulders. Cam stared down at the man. “You want to die?”
Larry nodded.
Maria’s stomach bottomed out. She didn’t like the direction this was heading.
She said, “Cam...?”
Cam touched Larry’s cheek, gave it a gentle caress. And then, with a quick, violent motion, Cam grabbed the man’s head and twisted it around 180 degrees.
The crack was so loud Maria could taste it.
Sue let out a wretched sound, somewhere between a scream and a sob. Kelly buried her face in Letti’s shoulder. JD hunkered down, his muzzle hair standing on edge, baring his teeth at Cam.
Maria was awestruck.
She thought about Cam’s past, his ordeal years ago when he and his friend were abducted by a pedophile. Cam hadn’t been the most stable child in the world before then, but afterwards he’d become withdrawn, and quite literally a danger to himself and others. He was committed into a psychiatric institution, given therapy and various drugs, but his condition never seemed to improve. While locked up, he was even accused of doing something unspeakable to another patient, even though it was never proven.
Could Cam—my dear, sweet, little brother Cam—be more disturbed than I ever imagined?
Or was he just being merciful when he snapped that poor man’s neck?
“We have to find Felix,” Cam said, standing up. “Sis, do you know how to get out of here?”
Maria simply stared at him, unable to reconcile his actions.
“Sis? We need to move before they come for us.”
“How many of them are there?” Letti asked.
Maria spoke in a monotone, keeping her eyes on Cam. “A lot. Eleanor, she names each one after a President.”
Kelly said, “There have been forty-three presidents, Mom.”
Letti put her hands on her hips. “Are you saying that crazy old bitch has forty-three crazy mutant children running around here?”
Maria thought of that old nursery rhyme, the one Eleanor was fond of repeating.
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
“I think she’s only had around twenty,” Maria said. “But she brings women in here. Gets them pregnant. Some of the babies don’t survive. Birth defects. And she kills the baby girls. Says no girl will ever be president.”
Letti gripped Maria’s arms. “How many are we talking here, Maria?”
“Including the children?” Maria said.
“Yes. Including the children.”
Maria closed her eyes, doing a mental count. “From what I’ve seen, there are more than fifty.”
# # #
Florence stared at the woman sitting on the floor of her closet—the women she’d just hit in the face—and instantly recognized who it was.
“You’re Deborah Novacek.”
Florence knew her because she was perhaps the most famous athlete competing in Iron Woman.
Deb looked like hell, filthy and frazzled, and now bleeding from her nose. She stared up at Florence, and then kicked out one of her prosthetic legs.
Florence side-stepped the kick and spread out her palms.
“Easy. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to hit you, but I didn’t expect you to be in my closet. My name is Florence Pillsbury. I’m a triathlete, too. Are you in trouble?”
Florence watched as Deb processed this. The poor girl was shaking all over. “Trap doors. Secret passages. Someone got into my room. A freak, with red eyes. He’s chasing me.”
Florence immediately helped the girl up.
“Are you hurt? Who got into your room, dear?”
“We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to—”
The knock at the door cut Deb off. Both women stared at it.
Florence asked, “Who is it?”
“This is Sheriff Dwight, of the Monk Creek Police Department. Can you open up for a moment, ma’am?”
“Sher—”
Florence clamped her hand over Deb’s mouth, cutting her off. This didn’t feel right.
“Just a second,” Florence called. Then she whispered to Deb, “I’ve got a weird feeling. Go hide under the bed.”
Deb shook her head. “No way in hell.”
“The bathroom then.”
“He’s the Sheriff.”
“There’s something in his voice I don’t like. Please hide while I talk to him.”
Deb chewed her lower lip. Then she nodded and walked to the bathroom, bouncing on her curved prosthetics.
“Mrs. Pillsbury?” The Sheriff said, knocking again. “Please open the door. It’s about your granddaughter.”
When Florence saw Deb was locked in the bathroom, she went to answer her door.
The Sheriff was a tall man, plump, pasty, wearing an ill-fitting police uniform. His hat was askew on his head. There was also something funny about his eyes. The edges were bright red.
They’re bloodshot. He’s wearing contact lenses to hide it.
“What about my granddaughter, Sheriff?” Florence only opened the door a few inches, and kept her foot planted behind it, like a doorstop.
“You need to com
e with us.”
Us? But he’s alone. Unless...
Florence craned her neck back, trying to see around the Sheriff. She caught a glimpse of a man behind him. A tall man, in overalls. He had a large jaw, and a rounded forehead that came to a point. Having done missionary work around the world and seen countless impoverished and disabled people, Florence recognized the man’s condition as microcephaly. He was what circus sideshows called a pinhead.
Not a person normally associated with law enforcement.
Florence’s uneasy feeling about this inn quadrupled when Deb showed up in her closet, but now it was off the charts. She realized her whole family was in danger.
Okay, now that I know the threat, I can deal with it.
Florence took a deep breath, centered herself, then stepped away from the door.
The men burst in. The microcephalac clapped his hands together and giggled, and the Sheriff offered a mean grin, showing that dental hygiene wasn’t one of his top priorities.
“Granny, that was a big mistake.”
He hitched up his belt and rested his hand on the butt of his gun, striking a rehearsed pose that was probably meant to intimidate.
Florence wasn’t intimidated. With her right hand, she struck the Sheriff’s jaw, driving his head upward. With her left, she shoved his wrist away from his holster and snagged his gun.
“Don’t move,” she said, backing away. “Don’t either of you—”
“Get her, Grover!” the Sheriff yelled.
Grover either always followed orders, or he was mentally impaired and didn’t recognize the threat of a gun. It didn’t matter either way to Florence. The microcephalac was twice her weight, and if he grabbed her it was over.
She shot him twice in the chest, and he fell like a redwood, crashing into the floor with a thump almost as loud as the gunfire.
Then she turned the revolver on the Sheriff.
“Where’s my family?”
The Sheriff’s eyes got wide, revealing more of their red-rimmed edges.
“Granny, put down the gun.”
“My family. Or I shoot you like I shot him.”
The Sheriff cast a quick glance at his fallen partner.
“We got ‘em. Ain’t no way you gettin’ ‘em back.”
“How many people are holding them?”
He stayed silent. She pulled back the hammer on the revolver.
“How many?”
“A lot more than the four bullets you got left, Granny. You got no idea what’s goin’ on.”
From the bathroom, Deb screamed.
Then Grover grabbed Florence’s ankle.
# # #
Felix stared, slack-jawed, at the figure slinking out of the cave. Its golden eyes caught the moonlight and glinted.
Ronald isn’t a man. He’s a mountain lion.
A surge of adrenaline temporarily overrode the pain in Felix’s tortured fingers, and he pawed at his pocket, trying to get at the handcuff keys. He slipped his shattered index finger into his jeans, pushed down, and screamed when it bent the wrong way.
He withdrew the finger, his whole body shaking in raw agony.
Ronald cocked his head to the side and padded closer, in no obvious hurry. Felix knew he needed to focus on the keys, but he was transfixed by the cat as it approached. The musk smell got stronger, and Ronald’s tail—broken in several places and shaped like a jagged lightning bolt—swished back and forth. It was strangely beautiful, almost hypnotic.
Then the cougar hissed, revealing three inch fangs, snapping Felix back into reality.
Handcuffs. Focus on my handcuffs.
Felix tried his unbroken pinky. Wincing, he slid it into his pocket, but couldn’t get down deep enough to grab the keys. He could just barely touch the metal ring with his fingertip, but couldn’t hook his pinky around them.
Ronald stalked closer to Felix, head down, eyes shining. The beast was huge, easily over two hundred pounds. Each paw was bigger than Felix’s face.
Ignore the pain. Get the keys.
Grunting, Felix forced his pinky in deeper, bending his ring finger back, the broken phalange bones grinding against one another, his previous knife wound splitting open.
Almost… almost…
Too much. The pain overtook him, and the world swirled away. Felix’s vision dimmed at the edges, the darkness forming a tunnel that got smaller and smaller until he blacked out.
Felix awoke on his knees, hugging the pole, his face warm. He opened his eyes—
—and saw Ronald only inches away, his hot, feline breath blowing onto Felix’s face.
Felix felt the scream welling up, and then the cat’s massive paw shot out, catching his pelvis, spinning Felix around the pole by his cuffed wrists.
This seemed to amuse the cougar, because he batted Felix in the other direction, like a tetherball. Felix felt the rents in his hips, where the claws hooked flesh through the denim.
My hips?
Oh, no... my pocket...
He chanced a look down at his bloody, ripped jeans.
Are the keys still in there?
Felix patted the material, feeling warm blood and torn fabric. The pain was twofold, both his ruined fingers and the gouges in his hip seemed to be in a contest for which hurt more. But there, under the heel of his hand—
The keys. And they’re poking through the denim.
Using his pinky and his thumb, he pinched the protruding handcuff key—
—and Ronald bit into Felix’s foot.
The bite wasn’t full force, the cat’s teeth not even penetrating the shoe. But the pressure caused a muscle cramp.
He’s playing with me.
The cougar tugged Felix, pulling him across the ground, forcing his hand away from his pocket as his body extended.
Did I get the keys?
I can’t tell! I can’t see!
And then Felix was fully stretched out, his cuffs around the pole, his body pulled taught by Ronald’s grip.
Do I have the goddamn keys?!?!
He squinted into the darkness, saw the key ring wrapped around his thumb.
Ronald continued to pull. The cuffs cut into Felix’s wrists. The pressure on his foot got worse, twisting Felix’s ankle. His spine screamed, joints reaching their limits, sockets beginning to separate, cartilage threatening to tear.
He’s pulling me in half.
I’m so sorry, Maria. I tried. I love you so very much.
And then the cat released him.
Not stopping to celebrate his luck, Felix scrambled back to the pole, getting it between him and the mountain lion. Then, using his teeth and his lips and his two unbroken fingers, he managed to fit the key into handcuff lock—
—just as Ronald swiped at him again with his huge paw.
Felix’s world spun, and he rolled and rolled and came to rest on his back, staring up at the orange hunter’s moon. He wiped his sleeve across his face, clearing some blood from his eyes.
The cuffs. They’re off.
I’m free!
Felix didn’t bother to look for Ronald. He got to his feet, fighting ten different kinds of pain, and scrambled into the woods. When he left the clearing, the tree canopy covered the moon, making it impossible to see. Felix ran blind, his mangled fingers bumping off of trees, continuing forge ahead until he saw a light in the distance, a light coming up exceedingly fast.
It’s a tow truck.
That was Felix’s last thought before the truck plowed into him.
# # #
Mal stared at his hand. Jimmy was dangling it up over Mal’s face.
“The operation has been a success,” Jimmy said. “The patient has survived.”
Mal turned his head to see the stump of his wrist, one of the pointy bones still sticking out through the flesh. It wasn’t bleeding anymore—a quick dip in the white powder clotted the wound within seconds. But the pain was still there.
The pain went deeper than just Mal’s nerve endings firing off signals. The pain wa
s also mental. The memory of what this monster had done to him—cutting the skin, snipping the muscles with scissors, using a hammer and chisel to get through the bone—that would haunt him for as long as he survived. Mal’s begging and pleading had devolved to incoherent bawling. Staring at the monster who had done this to him, the monster who gleefully held up his severed hand like a prize fish he’d just caught, was almost more agonizing than the physical hurt.
“Excellent work, my boy,” Eleanor said, setting down the camcorder. “Momma has to go check on the guests upstairs. But you might want to give your patient another examination.” Eleanor looked at Mal and smiled. “I think he may have some cancer in his feet.”
Eleanor patted Mal on the cheek, then waddled off, leaving through one of the operating room’s two doors.
“Foot cancer?” Jimmy said, his expression grim. “That’s a very serious condition. We’ll have to begin treatment immediately.”
Jimmy went to the instrument table, gripping a hacksaw in his oven mitt.
Mal cringed away, starting to babble again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
And then his arm, bloody and missing a hand, slipped out of the leather strap binding his wrist.
Without thinking, Mal thrust his traumatized arm at Jimmy as he inspected his saw, jabbing his protruding unla bone into the hunchback’s neck.
The pain was otherworldly. But the bone—sharp as a splinter from the chisel—cut deep into Jimmy’s flesh.
Jimmy grunted, stumbling backward, pressing both mitts to his wound. The blood gushed right through them.
“Laceration... to the... internal jugular vein... Need... QuikClot... to stop the bleeding...”
Jimmy reached for the bowl of powder on the instrument cart. Mal, his vision red with agony, thrust out and knocked the bowl away, upending it onto the floor. A plume of white dust hung in the air, then settled.
“Gone...” Jimmy’s red eyes grew wide. He stared at Mal. “You... knocked it over... The styptic…”
One of the hunchback’s hands stayed pressed to his pumping neck wound. The other picked up a scalpel.
Mal watched him stagger forward, the scalpel raised.
“You’re a doctor!” Mal managed to say. “You can stitch yourself up!”