by Mark Lukens
Except that wasn’t exactly true. Amber had told him what he should do even though he didn’t want to do it.
Maybe you should follow the man in your dreams, her voice echoed in his mind. See where he wants to take you.
As Ryan walked across the flagstones to the front porch, he thought Amber might be right. He was never going to find out anything until he let himself follow this Nightmare Man from his dreams.
The Nightmare Man had so many things to show him. The Nightmare Man had answers for him, he was sure of that.
But were they answers he wanted to find?
3.
Carol panicked. It was hard to tear her eyes away from what she’d seen inside the suitcase, but she needed to hurry. Ryan would be up here in a few minutes. She closed the suitcase and buckled the straps. Her fingers fumbled with the padlocks as she slipped one of the padlocks back through the little brass loops in the straps and she clicked it shut, locking it.
She heard the front door open and then close.
She grabbed the other padlock and it slipped out of her fingers and dropped down onto the wood floor with a clunk and then it rolled underneath the bed. She dropped down to her knees and reached under the bed, groping for the padlock in the shadows underneath the bed.
Oh God, she had to hurry – Ryan would be coming up the stairs any moment, and if he saw her in his room with the suitcase, if he saw that she’d opened it …
Her fingers found the padlock. She jumped up and clicked the padlock shut around the brass loop. She grabbed the suitcase and nearly flung it under the bed. She felt a muscle stretch painfully in her back from the quick twisting and pulling motion she’d just made. She practically sprinted to the bedroom door, opened it and stepped out into the hall.
Ryan wasn’t in the hallway yet, but she could hear him on the stairs, clomping up the steps, moving quickly.
She pulled the skeleton key out of her pants pocket and (Oh God she’d nearly dropped the small gold key from her pocket in the process, but she caught it just in time) jabbed it into the keyhole on the first try. She turned the key and locked the door. She turned and …
… saw Ryan enter the hallway from the top of the stairs.
He smiled at her. “Carol,” he said. He seemed surprised to see her standing in front of his bedroom door.
“I was just about to knock on your door,” she said quickly as she tried to hide the skeleton key in her clenched fist. She didn’t like the sound of her own voice, it sounded too frightened to her own ears. She was afraid he would see right through her.
And you should be frightened, her mind whispered. After what you just saw in his suitcase, you should be very frightened of him right now.
“Oh?” Ryan said and walked towards her. He already had his own skeleton key in his hand, ready to unlock his bedroom door.
“I … I am making lasagna tonight,” she said. “I wanted to let you know that it would be ready in a few hours in case you were going to go out somewhere and eat.”
Ryan stood in front of Carol and he was silent for a moment, but he was still smiling at her. He nodded. “I appreciate that, Carol.”
Carol brushed past Ryan and hurried back down the stairs, happy to be away from him right now. It was all she could do to not totally lose it, to not scream at the top of her lungs in her own hallway.
She got to the bottom of the stairs and glanced back up to make sure Ryan wasn’t watching her from the landing. She slipped the spare skeleton key into her pants pocket and hurried to the kitchen.
After what she’d seen in the suitcase, she knew everything had changed now. Everything she had thought she’d known was now different. And now, she feared, she knew the truth.
But there was one last thing she could check on. She grabbed her purse and her car keys and headed for the front door.
4.
Ryan unlocked his bedroom door and entered his room. He closed and locked his door, and then he looked around at the room. Something seemed strange in his room, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something seemed different.
The bed.
The suitcase under the bed.
He could see that the corner of the brown suitcase was poking out a little; he could see it from the doorway. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t left it like that. And the blanket on his bed looked disturbed and wrinkled.
Ryan pulled the suitcase out from underneath the bed and studied it for a moment. It was still locked; he even tugged on each padlock to make sure they were both locked. He pushed the suitcase back under the bed, farther under the bed in the shadows where he’d placed it the first time.
He stood up and picked up his mattress and stared down at the layer of money, making sure it was all there, making sure that it was untouched.
That was another thing you didn’t tell Amber about, his mind whispered. The brown suitcase under your bed.
Ryan tried to ignore the voice in his head.
If he wanted Amber to trust him, if he wanted to trust her, then why was he keeping these things from her?
And why was he so hesitant to look inside the suitcase?
Because you already know what’s inside, that low voice whispered again in his mind.
5.
At the same time Ryan was checking on his layer of money underneath his mattress, the black Lincoln drove up the county road and passed a sign that welcomed drivers to Edrington, Oregon.
Jake drove and Lita sat in the passenger seat.
Middle of fucking nowhere, Jake thought.
Mr. Murdock sat in the backseat. He held the photo of Ryan in his gloved hands, staring at it, studying it.
“We’re here,” Jake said.
Mr. Murdock didn’t answer. He looked out his tinted window at the houses and stores whipping by. There were forests everywhere in the distance, like this tiny town had been carved out of these woods and mountains.
6.
At the same time Mr. Murdock’s black Lincoln entered the town of Edrington, Amber was busy at the bar. She stacked more glasses when she got a break from serving customers.
Buddy was in the bar tonight. So were John and Scooter. She wanted to ask Buddy about Ryan, but she didn’t. She knew Ryan had quit, but she didn’t want to raise any suspicions with Buddy.
She thought back to when she and Ryan were in the woods. He had driven down that road, to that trail in the woods. He had told her everything he’d known, everything that he could remember anyway. He had confided in her and trusted her. And she hadn’t told him everything that she knew. She should’ve told him more about that shack in the woods where the body of the serial killer and his last victim were found. She should’ve told him that the shack had been torn down a long time ago – nobody wanted that shack in the woods anymore, nobody wanted a reminder of all of the horrible murders in Edrington ten years ago.
But she had been too afraid at the time.
Amber was still conflicted. She wanted to help Ryan, but she wondered what he knew about the shack in the woods? If he still remembered the shack, if he still thought it was there, then his memories must be from ten years ago. But he was around her age, early twenties, and that would have made him between ten and thirteen years old when the murders occurred. But that would mean that Ryan used to live in Edrington when he was a kid.
But she didn’t remember him. And no one else that she knew of so far seemed to recognize him.
But she still wanted to try and help him in any way she could.
Maybe there was a way to find out when Ryan lived here in town.
“Sweetie?”
The voice snapped her out of her daydream. It was Petey, a regular customer. He held up his empty shot glass.
Amber smiled and got him another shot of Wild Turkey.
She decided that she was going to tell Ryan everything she knew about the shack and the murders, which wasn’t much. But maybe she could find out some more information for him. She could start with the internet, then maybe ask some of the older
folks what they remembered. There were still so many unanswered questions about the killer and those murders, so many mysteries that were never solved.
She smiled and she felt better.
7.
Carol parked her car and turned off the ignition. She got out of the car and walked for a while along the grass. And then she stopped and stared down at the grass for a long moment.
She had her answer now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1.
Ryan stayed awake late into the night. He’d eaten lasagna with Carol earlier (Victor and Tom waited to eat until Ryan was out of the kitchen, of course), but Carol seemed very distracted and nervous. She didn’t talk much as they ate dinner together; she didn’t even ask him why he had quit working for Buddy.
He finished his plate off, downed his glass of orange juice, and thanked her for the delicious meal.
Then he went up to his room. He changed into his sweat pants and sprawled out on his bed, leaving the bathroom light on. He watched TV for a while, fighting sleep. His mind spun as he thought about things. He hadn’t gotten very far in his search for the answers in this town. There was something about Carol, some reason he needed to be here. There was something about the brown suitcase underneath his bed with the locks on it. He knew at some point he was going to have to open it, even if he needed to cut it open. Why was he putting off opening the suitcase if the answers might be in there right underneath him? What was he so afraid of?
And the dream-man. Why was he so afraid to see what he wanted to show him? Did it have something to do with the suitcase? Something to do with the straight razor with the word carved into it that he hadn’t read? Something to do with Carol?
Ryan rolled over and looked at the bedroom window. He could close the curtain, but it was flimsy and he would still be able to see the dark window through the sheer curtain. He had thought of hanging his blanket over the window, but as frightened as he was of the window, he thought he’d be more afraid if it was covered, more afraid if he couldn’t see the red-haired man coming.
Ryan lay awake for a few more hours as his thoughts began to scramble, becoming hard to understand, beginning to mix in with the first fingers of his dreams that reached out to envelop him.
And for once, he didn’t fight it.
He sank down into the darkness of sleep, down into the …
2.
… pitch black of his nightmare. But there in the darkness was that familiar reddish glow in the distance, and in that glow he could see the wooden shack with its sagging roof and the tree branches that hung over it, the branches scratching at the shingles and the moldy wood siding.
Scratching.
And he heard the familiar dripping sound in the darkness. The red-haired man, his nightmare escort, was close by, standing somewhere in the gloom.
And suddenly Ryan was right beside the shack, standing in front of the same window as before with its cracked panes and the cobwebs in the corners.
“You need to go inside,” the Nightmare Man whispered from somewhere nearby.
Ryan didn’t turn to look at him.
He wanted to run. He wanted to bolt into the next dream where he was in the churning water trying to reach the surface.
But he needed to see what was inside the shack. He needed to see the answers no matter how frightened he was.
And then he was inside the shack.
The shack only had one room. The walls were wood paneling, the ceiling was vaulted and the rough trusses of the roof were exposed. There were no lights overhead, no wires, no electricity. The room he stood in was large and dark. It sounded like bugs, and maybe even rats, skittered in the shadows that clung to the corners of the room.
The middle of the room was lit up, yet Ryan couldn’t see where the light was coming from, it was just “there” like it is in dreams sometimes.
The light shined down on a large, homemade wooden table where a naked man was strapped down. The only thing covering the man was a white cloth draped over his face. Splotches of bright red blood stained the white cloth.
The man’s ankles, knees, chest, arms, and neck were strapped down to the table with leather straps (they reminded Ryan of the straps on the brown suitcase under his bed). The man on the table was completely immobile. Even his head was held motionless between two pieces of wood on each side of his head, with smaller leather straps underneath his chin and strapped over his head. His hands were held down to the table by some kind of wooden box on each of his wrists, the boxes were attached to the table and each one had wooden slots where the ends of the man’s fingers poked out – each finger totally immobile and exposed.
Ryan looked back at the man’s head trapped in the wooden box with the blood-stained white cloth over his face. The man wasn’t moving – he couldn’t move, but his chest was heaving and the white cloth was fluttering up and down from each quick breath the man took.
Ryan shook his head no. His own breathing was so heavy and quick, he was afraid he was going to pass out. He could feel his heart jack-hammering in his chest. It was like he was really here in this shack at this moment, like all of this was real.
“This is only a dream,” Ryan whispered as he stared at the poor man strapped down to the table.
“It’s no dream, Cutter,” the red-haired man whispered from behind him.
Ryan spun around and stared at the red-haired man. The man’s eyes were cold, his mutilated grin wide, his scars bunched up on his cheeks from his smile.
The Nightmare Man walked past Ryan and over to the table. He stood beside the table and now Ryan could see that there was a metal cart next to the table, a cart he hadn’t noticed before. On top of the cart was an assortment of tools: hammers, knives, pliers, clamps, razors, and other instruments of torture.
The man picked up a ball-peen hammer; he stared at the hammer with an insane glee in his ice-blue eyes.
Ryan looked back at the man on the table. The man tried his best to struggle against his bonds, but it was hopeless – the leather straps were so tight that they dug deep into the man’s flesh. He groaned underneath the white cloth.
The red-haired nightmare man watched Ryan. “I see you’ve noticed the boxes on his hands.”
Ryan didn’t answer.
“They are clever little devices,” the red-haired man continued. “They are constructed to leave the ends of the fingers exposed and helpless, unable to move.”
The Nightmare Man took a step closer to the table, the hammer still clutched in his ruined hand. “The object is to smash the fingertips over and over again.”
He brought the hammer down on one of the man’s fingertips and smashed it flat, a spray of blood shot out of the fingertip and stained the wood table.
The man screamed from underneath the white cloth. He tried to struggle, but he couldn’t move his body or his head at all. His scream was muffled like the leather chin-strap was clamping his jaw shut.
“You smash the fingers again and again,” the red-haired man continued, “until the fingernails are gone, until the bones are mush, until nerve endings are exposed.” He brought the hammer down on the same smashed finger and the man screamed again.
The red-haired monstrosity looked at Ryan and walked towards him with the bloody hammer gripped in his ruined hand. Ryan noticed that the red-haired man’s fingers looked much like the man on the table’s smashed finger.
“Then you wait a few days,” the red-haired man said as he took another step towards Ryan. “You wait until the wounds in the fingertips become infected, where just the slightest pinprick is excruciating. And then …”
The red-haired man turned and brought the hammer back down on the same smashed finger. “You start all over again!” he shouted into the small room. He was nearly laughing. “The fingers become useless after a while. Even if this poor soul could escape, his hands would be useless.”
The man screamed and sobbed underneath the white cloth.
The red-haired man moved quickly down to the end
of the table and stared at the man’s naked feet.
“And the fingers are only the beginning. We haven’t even begun with the feet, yet.”
Ryan felt sick. He was sure he was going to puke – he couldn’t seem to hold any food down lately. “I can’t look,” Ryan whispered. “I want to leave.”
The red-haired nightmare man was suddenly right in front of Ryan’s face, he grabbed Ryan’s shirt with his scarred hands, his ruined face was only inches away from Ryan’s face.
“You can’t leave yet, Cutter,” the red-haired man said. “Don’t you want to see who’s under the cloth?”
Ryan shook his head no. “I can’t be here,” he muttered.
The red-haired man’s eyes widened in alarm. “No! You’re not leaving this time! You’re not -”
Suddenly, Ryan was swimming in the dark churning waters. He was so close to the surface now.
He broke through the surface and tried to stare up at the sky with the deep black holes where his eyes used to be. But he could feel the warmth.
Oh God, he could feel the warmth of the sun on his face!
As before, Ryan was both in his body and outside of his body. He could see his eyeless face looking up at the blue sky and the sun; he could see the insane smile on his face.
And he saw that he was in a stream, a wide stream, it was too small to be called a river. And in the distance was a pickup truck, its rear end sticking up out of the water like it had crashed into the stream. And floating in the water were the packs of money wrapped in plastic from his duffel bag.
3.
Ryan jumped awake from his dream and fought for his breath for a moment. He looked at the bedroom window and saw that it was almost morning; the sky beyond the tree branches was a dark blue now instead of inky black.
He was alive.
He was free of the dream. Free from the stream. Free from the shack.