by Mark Lukens
They got out of his car and hurried up the walkway to Amber’s front door.
When they got inside Amber’s room, she got on her computer right away.
It was the first time Ryan had been in Amber’s room. It was small, but she kept it tidy. The closet door was open and he saw that she kept the few possessions that she owned neatly arranged. There were a few framed photos of a woman on top of Amber’s dresser. Amber’s mother, Ryan guessed.
Amber sat at a small desk with her computer crowded on top of it. The computer was ten years old but she hadn’t bothered to upgrade – all of her money went into savings (what she could keep from Gary anyway) for her escape from this house and from this town. But the computer worked fine, even if it was a little slow. She let it warm up and then logged on to the internet. She brought up the Google page and typed in: Serial killer – Cutter.
Thousands of pages were brought up in a nanosecond.
She clicked on a few of them until she found some information about Cutter.
Ryan paced in the background.
“I got it,” Amber said.
Ryan hovered behind her, looking over her shoulder as she read from the page on the screen.
“Cutter’s real name was Michael Davis. They finally figured out who the killer was, but he killed himself before they could arrest him.” She scanned down the page with her eyes. “Looks like he killed himself at the shack right after he killed his last victim. But no one knows why he killed himself.”
“Cutter, that’s what the red-haired man in my dreams called me when he took me to that shack in the woods. He said the shack was mine, that I had built it, and that I had done legendary things there.”
Ryan stumbled away and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m Cutter,” he whispered.
Amber turned and looked at Ryan. “No, you’re not,” she said in a stern voice. “It’s impossible. I just told you he killed himself ten years ago before they could take him to jail.”
Ryan stared at Amber.
“You just lost your memory,” she said. “And you’ve seen this stuff somewhere before, and it was buried in your mind, and now you’ve got things mixed up in your memories.”
Ryan didn’t look convinced.
Amber turned back to her computer and she clicked on a different page. “Here, come look at this, Ryan. It’s a picture of Cutter, and it’s not you.”
Ryan hurried back over to the computer screen and saw a photo of Cutter. The man in the photograph looked nothing like Ryan – the man in the photograph was beginning to go bald, he had soft features and kind eyes, he looked more like a tax accountant than a torturer and a killer.
The man’s face seemed familiar to Ryan, but he couldn’t place it. He knew it was important to remember where he’d seen that face, but he couldn’t make himself remember – or he wouldn’t let himself remember.
“It’s not the red-haired man, either,” Ryan whispered.
Ryan walked away from the computer and sat down on the end of Amber’s neatly-made bed. He shook his head. “I know all of this sounds so crazy,” he said.
Amber came over to the bed and sat down beside him. “You’ve just got things mixed up, that’s all.”
“Who’s the red-haired man in my dreams?” Ryan asked, more to himself than to Amber. “Why was he tortured? Was he one of the victims? Why is he coming back to me and calling me Cutter?”
Amber stared at him. She touched his hand, and then his arm.
“There’s something I’m missing about all of this, a piece of the puzzle I’m not seeing.” He paused and sighed. “I’m just so tired. I wish I could sleep without dreams.”
“Maybe you should try and sleep,” Amber told him.
“I don’t want to dream again. I don’t want to see the red-haired man again.”
“Maybe you need to see him again. Maybe you need to see where the dream takes you next, maybe then you’ll see the piece of the puzzle that you’re missing.”
Ryan looked at her with hope in his eyes.
“Maybe if you dream, you’ll find more clues.”
Ryan nodded. He took out his wallet, keys, and a wad of money and set them on the table next to the bed. He kicked off his shoes at the side of the bed. Then he lay down on the bed, his head on one of her pillows. The pillows and bedding smelled fresh, much better than the rest of the house that Gary possessed. He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened.
Amber lay down beside him and stroked his hair. “Just go to sleep for a few minutes. I’ll be right here beside you. I can wake you up if it looks like you’re having a bad dream.”
Ryan barely nodded. He could feel himself drifting off to sleep, drifting down into the pitch black darkness.
3.
Jake picked Lita up at the gas station. She got into the Lincoln as the gas station attendant and the old man in front of the drugstore watched her. She slammed the door shut.
“Which way did he go?”
“That way.” Lita pointed.
Jake glanced over his shoulder and pulled out onto the street. “Not too big of a town, shouldn’t be too hard to spot his car.”
Lita didn’t say anything. What she’d seen had bothered her – there was something very different about Ryan now.
Jake noticed. “What’s wrong?”
“I walked up to Ryan’s car,” Lita told him. “I was about to pull out my gun, but as you could see, I had an audience.”
Jake nodded.
“It was weird. I called Ryan’s name and he looked at me, but he didn’t seem to remember me. Or even recognize me.”
“He’s just acting like that.”
“But why would he? It doesn’t make sense.”
Jake shrugged.
“Besides, this is Ryan we’re talking about,” she added. “He wouldn’t be able to pull off an acting job like that. He was never the smartest person around.”
“That’s why he would do something so stupid like take Mr. Murdock’s money,” Jake said as he turned a corner at the first street he came to and began his methodical search up and down the neighborhood blocks. He had a great memory for layouts of streets and roads. He’d bought a map earlier in the day and had already marked down some of the streets he had driven down. But that didn’t mean that Ryan couldn’t double back. But this was a small town and it was laid out pretty simply, a main road ran north and south, and another main road ran east and west, like a cross, and the rest of the town sprawled out from there. But the town only sprawled out so far, eventually everything ran into the woods and the mountains in this town.
“He wasn’t acting,” Lita said, not letting the conversation go. “When he looked at me, it was like he’d truly never seen me before in his life.”
“Hurt your feelings?”
Lita ignored his comment. “I think he might’ve lost his memory somehow. Maybe when you shot him or when he wrecked his truck.”
Jake scanned the driveways as he drove slowly down the street. A van had to pass him because he was driving so slowly.
It was getting late, but Jake wasn’t going back to the motel room and face Mr. Murdock without Ryan and the money.
The sky had darkened quickly. There was a big storm moving in. Not only had the radio proclaimed that, but every townsperson he had met so far had told him – a storm must be a big deal around here, the only exciting thing that was happening these days. And there was cold weather following the storm, he had also been informed by these same townspeople. God, he couldn’t wait to get this over with and get back down to California.
“There’s something else,” Lita said. “Something strange about Ryan.”
“What?” Jake sighed.
“He has blue eyes.”
Jake came to the end of the street and stopped at the stop sign.
He looked at her. “So?”
“He had brown eyes before.”
“So he got some contact lenses.”
“I don’t think those were contact lenses. They l
ooked real.”
“So he got some very good contacts. He can afford them now.”
“But why would he do that? Why would he change only his eye color and nothing else about his appearance?”
Jake shrugged. He didn’t care. He only cared about finding Ryan and getting the money back. He turned left to drive down the next block.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1.
Amber watched Ryan. He was sleeping peacefully on the bed, in a deep sleep. She raised her head and looked at his wallet, his car keys, and the wad of money on her nightstand next to her bed. She got up very carefully, trying not to disturb him; she could tell that he needed sleep. Now that Ryan had seen Cutter’s face, maybe he could clear things up a little in his mind after he got some good sleep.
She crept around the foot of the bed with her eyes on Ryan the whole time. She stood in front of the nightstand. She needed to look inside his wallet. She needed to make sure he was telling the truth; she needed to make sure he wasn’t another nutjob. She didn’t need another nutjob in her life – she already had Gary.
She picked up the wallet and watched Ryan the whole time. She expected him to sit up with a big insane smile on his face and yell, “Gotcha!” But he didn’t; he slept peacefully, his breathing still deep. If he was having one of his nightmares right now, she couldn’t tell.
Amber picked up Ryan’s wallet and opened it.
Ryan groaned and turned over in his sleep.
She froze with the open wallet in her hand, expecting him to wake up, but he turned over on his side, facing away from her. That made her feel a little better.
She looked down at the wallet. There was nothing inside except his driver’s license, which she studied very carefully. It read: RYAN FREEMAN. He was from Oakland, California. His height was 5’10” and his eyes were stated as BROWN.
Brown eyes? Ryan didn’t have brown eyes, he had blue ones. Intense blue eyes.
She set the wallet back down on the table and left the room.
2.
Ryan’s eyes popped open. He jumped up and looked around the bedroom. For a split second he couldn’t remember where he was. He looked around at the frilly curtains on the window, the pink bedspread he was lying on, the white dresser with the collection of mementos and framed photographs on top.
It all came back to him in a rush. He was in Amber’s bedroom.
He didn’t think he’d slept much, if at all. Maybe just a few minutes. He didn’t remember any dreams. Maybe he had slept for a few moments without dreams. He would take what he could get. At least he felt a little better, like he had gotten some rest.
His wallet, keys, and money were still on the end table next to the bed.
But Amber wasn’t in the room.
“Amber?” he called out.
No answer.
He got up and walked over to the open doorway that led out into the hall. He poked his head out in the hall which was dark. The house was very quiet. “Amber, you out here?”
Still no answer from her.
He walked down the hall to the next open doorway – it was a bathroom. Amber wasn’t in the bathroom, but there was something sitting on the edge of the sink – something he’d seen before.
He entered the small bathroom and walked towards the sink, his eyes on the object balanced at the edge of that sink – it was a straight razor, the old-fashioned kind with a wood handle. And there was something carved into the handle. He had seen that same straight razor before – in his bedroom at Carol’s house.
And here it was in this bathroom.
He picked up the straight razor and looked down at the word carved into the handle: CUTTER. He opened it and studied the lethally sharp blade. The wood handle looked very old – worn and stained, but the razor blade looked brand new and ready to do its job.
And it was here waiting for him.
He looked in the mirror at his face. That wasn’t his face – he was sure of it. That was a different man’s face that looked back at him, that was Ryan Freeman’s face in the mirror, not his.
Ryan brought the razor up to the top of his forehead and drew the sharp blade across his skin just under the hairline and left a deep red line in his flesh. Then he drew the blade down each side of his face, right beside his hairline, all the way down to his jaw. The cuts were thin and deep, the blade so sharp that the wounds had only begun to bleed now.
He set the straight razor down on the edge of the sink; it made a clinking sound in the quiet house. He probed with his fingers at the line he’d cut around his face. He dug his fingers underneath his skin and began to pull at his skin, tearing it away from his skull in one sheet.
“Ryan!” Amber screamed from the doorway. “What are you doing?!”
Ryan turned and looked at Amber with a big smile on his half-peeled face. “There’s another face under here!” he shouted at her.
And Ryan drifted off to …
3.
White.
Heavy breathing.
The white cloth was taken away and all Cutter could see was the ceiling of wood trusses from the shack from the woods.
And then the red-haired man leaned over into Cutter’s field of vision. He was grinning and holding the straight razor with the word Cutter carved into its old-fashioned wood handle.
“We’ve got all of eternity to find out how you did it, Cutter. But for now, you know what you need to do. You need to cut her.”
You need to cut her.
You need to cut her.
Cut her …
4.
Cut her.
Cut her.
Ryan snapped awake from his nightmare.
He stood at the foot of Amber’s bed with the straight razor in one hand.
Amber slept on the bed in the same place she’d lain down beside him when she stroked his hair and told him to go to sleep.
Ryan stared at her and he could hear the red-haired man’s voice whispering to him from somewhere.
“Cut her. Cut her. Cutter.”
Amber’s eyes popped open and she sat up when she saw Ryan standing at the foot of her bed. “Ryan, what are you doing?”
Ryan felt confused – what was he doing?
“Where did you get that razor?” Amber asked in a careful voice.
He looked down at the straight razor in his hand.
“I don’t know,” he told her.
“You didn’t have it with you before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you okay, Ryan?”
Ryan stared at Amber for a long moment. It was quiet in the house. But there was a distant rumbling of thunder from some far off distance.
“You were right, Amber. The dreams would give me the answers I needed. Now I know what to do. I know who I am. I know what I am. I’m Cutter.”
Amber got out of bed very slowly, making sure she didn’t make any sudden movements; her eyes were on Ryan the whole time.
“Ryan, you know that’s not possible. We already talked about this.”
Ryan took a step towards the corner of the bed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. I’ve changed.”
Amber stood by the side of her bed, staring at Ryan.
“You’ve got to trust me,” Ryan said. “I need you to go with me to Carol’s house. I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t tell you what that woman at the gas station was after, what she wanted.”
Amber still watched Ryan, unsure about him for the moment.
“I want you to go with me. Please. I want to give you something.”
The house was very quiet for a moment – quiet enough for them to hear Gary’s truck pull up in the driveway outside.
5.
Jake and Lita turned onto Amber’s street. They drove slowly down the street, both of them searching the driveways with their eyes.
Then a black pickup truck came from nowhere and roared past them, honking its horn. It passed right by them and Lita got a glimpse of an overweight man with not much hair left sc
owling at them. Heavy metal music poured out of the cab of the pickup. He swerved in front of the Lincoln, cutting it a little too close to the front of their car, and then he sped down the road.
“Asshole,” Jake muttered.
But Lita saw where the truck was speeding to – a small house with a silver Chevy Impala parked in front of it. “Look,” she told Jake.
Jake slowed the car down even more, and then pulled over to the side of the road; they were still a few houses down from Amber’s house. They sat in the car with the engine running and watched the black pickup whip into the driveway. The truck nearly skidded to a stop and it rocked for a moment as the large man got out.
“That’s Ryan’s car,” Lita whispered.
Jake could see that. He could also see that there was going to be at least one other person in the house when they paid Ryan a visit.
The radio was on in their car, but it was turned almost all the way down. But Jake could still hear an announcer talking about a storm coming that was going to dump buckets of rain. He could see the buildup of clouds in the sky, and lightning on the horizon.
“This storm’s going to be a doozey,” the radio announcer said.
Yep, Jake thought, a storm is definitely coming.
“He seems angry,” Lita said with no emotion as she watched Gary march across his lawn. He looked at the silver Impala as he went to his front door, and he was cussing, he definitely seemed upset about Ryan’s car being there.
Jake checked his gun; he checked the clip and made sure there was a bullet in the chamber. “It’s show time.”
Lita looked at Jake. “What about our friend in the pickup?”
“Looks like it’s his unlucky day,” Jake said as he put the car in drive and rolled slowly down the street to Amber’s house.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1.
Amber didn’t know what to say to Ryan’s request. He wanted her to go with him to Carol’s house and give her something – something that the lady at the gas station wanted, something that other people wanted. Could she trust him? There was something wrong with him mentally; she had to admit that to herself now. She had tried her best to help him, tried her best to show him that he couldn’t be the serial killer called Cutter. But somehow Ryan believed he was this man, or the reincarnation of this man, or possessed by this killer. And now he had a straight razor with him.