The Devil's Cauldron

by Michael Wallace

  “We should call the cops.”

  “We already tried the Costa Rican government. You want to go back to those guys?”

  “No.”

  Becca dropped the knife in the pack. “Then we’ll take care of this ourselves. And if anyone touches Eric or Meggie, they’ll be sorry.”

  He eyed her with fresh respect. “I would hate to be the bully who messes with our kid. You’re going to be some momma bear.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Meggie must have hit the boulder on her way down. Slammed into it, then not fallen the rest of the way into the shaft. That was the only thing that made sense. Otherwise, she’d have died in the fall.

  Seven years later, lying paralyzed in her bed, listening to the rain pour through the jungle canopy to drum on the roof, she couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. What had happened next?

  Meggie must have lain on that rock for hours. Right in sight of Kaitlyn, who had lost one rope down the shaft, but still had the other. Why didn’t she climb down to finish the job and push her off the boulder? Meggie must have looked dead already. Or so close to it that Kaitlyn figured she’d never make it out of the desert. But she hadn’t counted on Duperre doing his job. He must have summoned help: a rescue crew and a life flight.

  When Meggie clawed her way out of a coma several weeks later she was on a private flight to Costa Rica. She had no memory of anything after the fall and even that had come back only over the course of weeks. Meanwhile, she was terrified to discover that her body no longer worked. She could move her eyes, twitch one finger and nothing else. It was like being squeezed in that stone hole at the bottom of the cave all over again.

  After a few weeks of care in Costa Rica, Benjamin came down with Kaitlyn, and some government official appeared and pronounced Benjamin and Meggie married. What a bunch of bullshit. Nobody bothered to ask her. Why would Benjamin do it? Apparently so he could take over her affairs as her so-called spouse. And that meant Kaitlyn was in charge.

  They were talking in the hall right now. The rain was white noise that muffled the low voices and kept the words indistinct. The tone was clear enough though. Kaitlyn, commanding, needling, or conniving, as the case demanded. Benjamin, reluctant, whiny. But too weak to stand up to her.

  Meggie’s stomach lurched at the memory of the torture in the hydrotherapy baths. Kaitlyn had lowered her into the water, waited until she’d almost drowned, then hauled her out.

  Defy her. Tell Benjamin the truth.

  But how? She could blink and she could move her right index finger. If someone asked the right questions, she could answer. Kaitlyn would control the situation. Make sure that only wrong questions were asked.

  Benjamin raised his voice. “I can’t do it. It’s too much.”

  “Shh!”

  Their voices lowered again. Moments later, the door swung open. Two figures stepped into the darkened room. Kaitlyn moved to the doors that led onto the covered back deck and swung them open, then turned on the porch light.

  Rain ran in sheets off the roof, forming a curtain of water beyond the deck. The air was as thick and humid as pond scum. It shimmered around the deck light, which reached into the room to cast everything in gray.

  “Hello, Meggie,” Benjamin said. He stood above her bed, but turned away when she met his gaze. “Sorry it has been so long.”

  How long? Six months, at least. He used to visit regularly in the first couple of years after the accident. He’d sit in the corner, sometimes quiet and brooding. Other times, talking. Justifying bad behavior, complaining about his two brothers, who didn’t think he was running the company right. Sometimes, he even complained about Kaitlyn, but not often.

  What he didn’t do, what he never did, was let Meggie talk. Her mouth was stiff and her vocal cords dead, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have communicated. He could have asked her to blink answers, could have moved a paper with letters on it beneath her tapping finger. She would have told him what Kaitlyn had done. Warned him that she was playing him. Anything to penetrate the mind-numbing spell his cousin had cast over him. But he never asked her to blink so much as her preference in slippers.

  “She knows,” Kaitlyn said to him. “I don’t know how, but she found out.”

  Meggie’s heart thumped in her chest. No waiting around—the woman slithered right to her monstrous revelation.

  Benjamin chewed his lip. “Do you suppose she’s remembering? After all this time, the details of the fall are coming back to her?”

  “What are you talking about?” Kaitlyn let out a harsh, barking laugh. “Oh, that? She’s known that all along.”

  He drew back a pace. “She does? How does she know?”

  “Because I told her.”

  “Why would you do that?” he whined.

  “Why shouldn’t she know? You want her to think it was my fault? That I was the one who tied the rope? That my knots were crap and they made her fall? Hah. No, she’s known all along. It was the first thing I told her when she woke up, that you were the one who tied the rope. That when search and rescue tried to figure out what had gone wrong, you lied and blamed it on her.”

  You liar, Meggie thought, but not at Benjamin. You tried to kill me. It wasn’t him, it was you.

  She had plenty of reasons to hate Benjamin after everything he had done. Or not done, as the case may be. He could have stood up for her a million times, from the moment Kaitlyn bullied them through the final squeeze, to when he had left her here to rot. But the fall was his cousin’s doing. Not his.

  “Meggie, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, I promise.” He turned to Kaitlyn, confusion spreading across his face. “Wait, if that’s not it, what are you talking about? What did she find out?”

  “You know what.” She sidled up to Benjamin and put an intimate hand on the back of his neck. She turned on her sultry voice and whispered in his ear, just loud enough for Meggie to hear. “What you did to me. What you’re still doing to me.”

  He staggered back. His eyes whipped over to Meggie, then looked away just as quickly. The guilt on his face was enough to confirm what Kaitlyn had claimed a couple of days earlier in the hydrotherapy room.

  While Meggie sat gasping for breath after coming out of the tub, with water streaming down her face and body, Kaitlyn had explained.

  “The reason I destroyed you,” she had said, “and the reason you never had a chance against me, is because Benjamin loves me. Or thinks he does. It’s really a sick fascination. I’ve known it since I was fourteen and I showed him my breasts when we were swimming at the lake. I took off my top and he didn’t look away. He was seventeen and knew better, but he stared.”

  Under other circumstances, hearing this disgusting news would have only increased her hatred for Benjamin. But that paled compared to fear of Kaitlyn and her absolute loathing of the woman. Whatever Benjamin’s guilt, she was sure that Kaitlyn had known exactly what she was doing when she took off her top.

  “You must be shocked,” Kaitlyn had said. “And you’d be more shocked to hear that I slept with him. We were in college, and still close—of course I was going to go to the same school. I was finishing my freshman year, and he’d just turned twenty-one and was going to be a senior. He took me to a stupid frat party where we drank too much. We ended up in a bedroom, making out. Nothing crazy, only the normal things we’d done before.”

  Sure, the normal things. Like all cousins did, right? If Meggie could have shut her ears, she would have. But she was compelled to listen as Kaitlyn shared the details.

  “He was drunk, and I tried to get him to sleep with me. But he pushed me away, mumbled that it wasn’t right. Later, we went back downstairs.

  “When he called the next day, I thought he was going to be angry that I’d tried to get his pants off. But he couldn’t remember. He was worried, he thought something had happened between us, but he didn’t know. I started to cry. ‘You don’t remember?’ I said. ‘How could you not remember?’ No, he didn’t
remember a thing.”

  “‘I told you to stop,’ I said. ‘But you wouldn’t. You kept pushing and pushing. Eventually I—’” Kaitlyn’s voice broke, as if she were upset by the memory. “‘Eventually, I gave in.’”

  She stared into Meggie’s eyes and wiped away her own, where she’d raised real tears. A smile replaced the hurt look. “From that moment he was mine. I knew he’d give me whatever I wanted. And he did. The next time, we did sleep together—the second time is always easier, after all. Don’t close your eyes!”

  Meggie opened them again. Kaitlyn bent to pull the wet strings of hair out of her face. The woman’s voice hardened and Meggie worried she was going to lower her into the tub again.

  “He never cared about you. He only wanted me. Like that night I showed up in Nevada to share your room and you thought you’d be quiet in the next bed. That’s right, I heard you screwing over there. I knew. Did you know we returned to that fleabag motel the next night? They’d loaded you on a helicopter and lifeflighted you to Las Vegas. Benjamin thought you were going to die. That didn’t stop him from fucking me in your bed.

  “I was afraid at first when you didn’t die. What if you woke up and told them? Later, when we realized you were paralyzed, and when your aunt and uncle signed you over to Benjamin’s care, I realized what an opportunity this was. Always around as a reminder of secrets. What if they got out? He needed my help.”

  Now, in her bed, with the rain drumming on the roof, Meggie figured she had most of Kaitlyn’s plan figured out. Tropical Beans was hers to control, so long as she could control Benjamin. Sex and guilt. But why did she want her story to get out now?

  “I don’t understand,” Benjamin said. He looked like he wanted to hurl himself from the balcony into the forest below. “How did she find out?”

  “I told you, I don’t know,” Kaitlyn said. “But ask her if you want. Ask her if you don’t believe me.”

  “Was it you? Did you tell her?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. She turned to Meggie. “Blink once if you know what he did to me. Twice if you don’t know.”

  This was her chance. Blink twice. Play dumb. Force Kaitlyn to explain herself. Then maybe Benjamin would ask her more questions and she could get him the real truth.

  After seven years? You think he’ll ask now? Don’t kid yourself.

  Meggie didn’t owe Benjamin anything. Let him twitch under his guilt like a bug on a pin. Even if Kaitlyn’s story was fake, he had plenty to answer for.

  And if you refuse, she’ll drag you back into the hydrotherapy room. Torture you. Then kill you.

  Kaitlyn was going to kill her anyway. That was the only thing Meggie knew for sure. Kaitlyn wouldn’t have shared so much if she meant to leave Costa Rica with Meggie alive. She’d already left one mess—and though she justified it by pointing to her emotional manipulation of Benjamin—sooner or later she’d need to clean it up. Otherwise, someone would find out.

  “Meggie?” Kaitlyn said. “Tell the truth. Blink once if you know what he did.”

  “Please tell me no,” Benjamin said. “I can’t stand for you to know what I did.”

  He was practically begging her to lie. To blink twice and say that no, she had no idea that he’d forced himself on his cousin at a frat party.

  Meggie blinked once. I know.

  Benjamin gasped.

  “She knows everything,” Kaitlyn said. “When she found out you raped me, I broke down and told her everything. How you wouldn’t leave me alone. How the first time you slept with her you came to my apartment afterward and I gave you a blow job. How you screwed me three times on the day the two of you got engaged. How on the night she fell—”

  “Stop!” It came out of his mouth in a sob.

  “She knows everything.” Kaitlyn hugged him. “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t stop to question how ridiculous this story was. Why was Kaitlyn doing this? Confess everything? It didn’t make any sense. And forget whether or not Meggie knew—how would she have leveled such an accusation at Kaitlyn in the first place? Blink it? God, why didn’t he wake up?

  He was clinging to Kaitlyn now, sobbing, but she pushed him away. Her voice hardened. “Now you know what has to be done.”

  “No, please.”

  “It’s going to get out. If you don’t take care of it now—finish it—everyone will know.”

  He turned a dull, lizard-like gaze toward the bed. For the first time since he’d entered the room, his eyes met Meggie’s and held them.

  She blinked twice: no. She did it again. NO!

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eric lay in bed, worrying. Guarding the cell phone didn’t seem so important a task now that he was doing it. After dinner he’d gone straight to his room. He shut the door, tried to lock it. But the doors here didn’t have locks. Resident facilities never did. That was UNSAFE.

  He took out the phone and hid it under his pillow, then lay down. A nervous tickle squirmed in his stomach every time someone walked by in the hall. When Diego called in for him to get ready for bed, he put on his pajamas, then stuffed the phone down his underpants when he went in to brush his teeth and use the bathroom. He almost dropped it in the toilet.

  About an hour after lights out, a quiet knock sounded on his door. Diego entered holding a penlight with a blue beam. Eric squinted as the light hit him in the face.

  “Sorry, Ruk.” He lowered the light. “You’ve got the phone?”

  Eric handed it over with some reluctance.

  “Why is it so warm?”

  “I had it down my underwear for safety.”

  “Yuck. Hombre, you didn’t need to do that. It was in your nightstand all week and nobody found it.”

  Diego wiped it on his pant leg, then turned it on and messed around with the buttons. He made a little movie of Eric, to prove he could work it, then dropped the phone in the pocket of his scrub top.

  “Okay. Be back in a few.”

  As soon as Diego left, Eric started to think that his aide had tricked him. There was no need to put the phone under his pillow or drop it down his shorts. Diego was right—it had been sitting safely in the nightstand drawer all week. Diego only told him to guard it so he’d feel useful.

  “I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I’m not even Dr. Watson, 221B Baker Street.”

  He climbed out of bed and threw open the shutters to the balcony. It was raining hard now, and water streamed off the roof. He stuck his hand out from the balcony and let the water flow around it. Boy, was it cats and dogs out there.

  His building stood on stilts, pushing it into the canopy like a treehouse, but tonight he felt the trees and heard their branches bending in the wind and beneath the rain, but could only see shadows. A little light reflected from over the roof of his building, in the direction of the main hall, but it wasn’t enough to see far.

  Then a light turned on in one of the rooms in the habitat opposite his. He moved to the side of the balcony so he didn’t have to squint through the sheet of water pouring off the front, but only through normal rain. No, the light wasn’t coming from the opposite room, but from its balcony.

  “Someone else is awake.”

  That building had a ramp up from the forest floor, and it twisted back and forth like a snake until it reached the suspended walkway that linked the habitat to the main building. That habitat must be where the wheelchair people lived. Right, because it was closer to the dining hall and the patio, so they didn’t have as far to go. Covered walkways linked his habitat to that one. Good thing, so Diego didn’t have to walk out in the rain.

  And then it occurred to him that the light was probably coming from Meggie’s porch. That’s because Diego needed light to see her, to interview her with the cell phone camera.

  Because the habitats were like starfish arms, radiating from a central point, the porch opposite him was only about thirty feet away across the open air, even though you’d have to walk a lot farther to get there from where Eric stood. He leaned out
to see if he could peer into Meggie’s room. It was too dark to see much. Shadows moved. Figures. People talking and waving their arms. The rain was too loud to hear anything. Who were they?

  One must be Diego. Was the other one Meggie?

  “Don’t forget. She’s locked in the dungeon. The witch put her there, and—”

  One of the figures moved closer to the open doors, and a bit of light caught her face before she returned to the shadows. The words froze on his lips.

  It was her. The witch.

  #

  Meggie blinked furiously, trying to get Benjamin’s attention. But he was staring at the wall behind her, licking his lips.

  “Kait, I don’t know.”

  “It has to be done. She knows too much. And if she tells. . .”

  “But tonight?”

  “Tonight, my dear. People are looking for her. Soon, they will find her.”

  Kaitlyn stripped the sheet from Meggie’s body and yanked it free where it tucked under the mattress. She folded it twice, then twisted it in a knot. She held it out to Benjamin, who shook his head and took a step backward.

  Don’t do it. Please, for God’s sake.

  “Take it. I know you don’t want to, I know this sucks. But you have to do it.”

  Benjamin didn’t reach for it, but he didn’t move toward the door, either. And he didn’t say no. When Kaitlyn shoved the twisted-up sheet into his chest, he took it with shaking hands. She pushed him toward the bed. He looked down at the sheet, at Meggie’s still body, at the wall behind her head. Anywhere but her face.

  Kaitlyn moved to the open doors that led onto the porch. She wore an ugly expression, like the face of a farmer who has discovered a rat’s nest in the woodpile and now stands above the baby rats with a shovel in hand, ready to get the unpleasant task over with.

  Benjamin clenched the sheet in his fists. He looked like he was going to be sick all over Meggie. He bent and lowered it with shaking hands.

  Meggie stared up at him, eyes bulging. No blinking now. Only waiting as he lowered the sheet toward her mouth and nose. Her fiancé. Husband. The man who had married her under false pretenses, far away from anyone who might have objected. The man nominally in charge of her care. Was now about to murder her.