by John Moralee
They were human heads.
Nine of them.
He zipped the bag closed before he was sick.
His hands were shaking.
“W-what’s in the other bag, David?”
“His other stuff.”
“More heads?”
“No. The things he uses to hurt people. A saw and a drill and more knives.”
Fletcher opened the second bag. It looked like a DIY enthusiast’s collection of tools.
“Okay – I’ll go back – but you stay here. Lock yourself in until I come back, okay?”
“Okay,” the boy said.
Armed with the wrench, Fletcher exited his truck. The heat blasted him in the face. He looked down the road - but he was too far away to see the man. He decided to go back just to the point where he would be able to see if the man had moved since jumping out. If the man wasn’t there, he would run back to the truck as fast as possible.
Vigilantly looking in all directions, Fletcher walked on the road as far as the point where he had lost control of his truck. He stopped next to the tracks made by his tyres. There was still a cloud of dust in the air, slowly settling. It stung his eyes.
From there, he could see the body of the man had not moved from the roadside, a distance of roughly a hundred metres. Fletcher swore. He would have to check on the killer’s condition, but he wasn’t going to be careless. The man could be laying a trap.
Fletcher left the road and crept up on the man’s position in a wide circle, keeping himself low, crawling closer only when he was sure he would not be seen. The desert provided good cover. He approached the man’s position from the opposite direction, pausing when he was about ten metres away.
Fletcher’s new position made him see something not obvious from the other side – that the body was not a body at all. It was the man’s jacket filled with rocks to make it look human-shaped. There was some blood on it and the ground around it – but no trail to follow. At least the man had injured himself during his escape. That was something.
But where was he now?
Fletcher turned around, expecting the man to have crept up behind him, but there was nobody there. Fletcher decided to take a calculated risk. He slowly stood up and looked around with a better view. He could not see tracks near the fake body. The man had not gone into the desert – at least not on his side of the road. The man must have crossed to the other side – but where was he?
Fletcher got an answer a second later.
In the distance he heard a noise:
RRRRRRRRRRRRR!
It was the scream of his truck’s horn.
RRRRRRRRRRRRR!
The man had left the jacket as a diversion. Hoping Fletcher would come back – so he could get to the truck and the boy while Fletcher was busy.
Fletcher ran towards the blaring horn, praying he would get there in time to save David.
*
RRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Sweat rolled down his forehead and the nape of his neck as Fletcher neared his truck. He could see it was parked where he’d left it. He could not see the man anywhere – but he slowed down before he got to the rear. He looked at the left and right sides – seeing nobody – then lowered himself to look underneath. Beyond the black underside of the truck he could see daylight. It didn’t look as though the man was hiding there.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Fletcher ran to the back of the truck, which he could see remained locked with his large padlock, then edged around the side, moving quickly and stealthily to the driver’s door. Just then he heard a click as the door unlocked. The door started opening. Fletcher raised his wrench to strike the man’s head the moment he appeared – but it was David.
“Hurry up!” the boy shouted. “I saw him. He was coming, but I beeped the horn and he disappeared.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know!”
“Okay, okay! Let’s just go.”
Fletcher climbed into the cab. David moved into the passenger seat and struggled to belt himself in, while Fletcher locked the doors and slipped his key into the engine and turned it, making the engine kick into life with an angry growl. His eyes darted to the mirrors, looking for any signs of movement. He wasted no time putting his vehicle into first gear. He pressed the pedal to the floor and felt the truck straining to increase its speed from zero to ten kph, but once the wheels were turning it became easier to increase the speed to twenty, then thirty, forty and fifty. He shifted gears again and again, getting the speed up to a hundred kilometres per hour. He was pushing the truck a little too fast for comfort, but Fletcher didn’t care as long as he got away from the madman.
“I’m sorry,” David said.
“What for?”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to go back.”
“No worries, kid. It was the right thing to do – it just didn’t work out, that’s all. We’ll have to let the police go after him. That’s their job, not ours.”
“I guess so,” David said, sniffling back tears.
Fletcher steadied his speed. They travelled three more kilometres before he heard something. He had been driving trucks for most of his adult life – giving him the experience to recognise something was wrong with his just by listening. He looked at the engine temperature gauge and saw the warning light blinking red.
He swore.
“What’s wrong?” David said.
“The engine’s overheated. I’ll have to stop to cool it down.”
“Now?”
Fletcher sadly nodded. He slowed down and pulled the truck into the side of the road. He reckoned he had left the killer at least three miles back - so there was no danger of him catching up any time soon – but he didn’t want to dawdle. He pressed the button that opened the engine compartment and saw steam coming out. Grabbing a bottle of water, he hopped out and went around to the front of his truck. David got out of the cab, too.
“I’ll watch for him,” the boy said.
Fletcher lifted the lid and studied the engine. The heat was oppressive, forcing him to step back. He waited a minute for the steam to stop. Then he unscrewed the radiator’s cap and poured in some water. It hissed and sizzled and boiled away instantly. He poured in some more, which didn’t make as much noise. He emptied the rest of the bottle into the radiator before securing the cap. When he was done with that, he expected to see David nearby.
“It’s done!” he said, but David did not reply.
Fletcher had been too busy to notice when the boy disappeared. The last time he’d been standing only ten feet away, watching the road. That had been two or three minutes earlier. Where was he now? Maybe the boy had gone to urinate somewhere?
“David?” he called out, suddenly afraid.
There was a reply – muffled – from the rear of the truck.
Turning, Fletcher saw the man calling himself Stephen O’Shaunessy. His clothes looked torn and bloody and his hair was wild after riding on the top of the truck. He was lying on top of David - strangling the boy with his bare hands. David was struggling beneath him, his face going purple. The man had his arms pinned down. David’s legs kicked out ineffectively as the man squeezed and squeezed his throat. He was going to kill him.
Fletcher grabbed his wrench and ran the length of the truck, yelling to distract the man, but the man ignored him; he was too focussed on murdering David. He kept squeezing David’s throat with his hands and grinning while he did it. He only looked up when Fletcher was almost upon him.
Fletcher swung the wrench with all of his strength.
This time he didn’t miss.
He struck the man so hard he felt the man’s skull dent with a loud crack. He fell to one side, blood pouring out of his head wound, his eyes rolling back in his head. His hands released David as he died. David coughed and scrambled out from beneath his corpse. There were deep ugly bruises on his throat, but he looked like he was all right.
Fletcher hit the man a second time – making sure he was absolutely dead.
The dead man’s head looked like a broken egg When he stepped back bile rose up his throat. He turned away from the body to vomit. After he had emptied his stomach, he spat on the ground and wiped his mouth. He felt much better.
“That was fun,” David said.
“What?” Fletcher said. He looked up and saw David standing over the body, one hand nursing his throat, the other taking off his baseball cap, revealing long blonde hair underneath, which he shook free until it fell to his shoulders.
No – not his shoulders. Her shoulders.
It was obvious once “David” removed his baseball cap, which had disguised her face. David was a small, masculine woman aged about thirty. Without make-up, she easily passed for a boy.
Before Fletcher could move she raised the front of her baggy T-shirt, showing him the butt of a gun. “Don’t even think about trying that, Fletcher. You’ll end up as one of the heads in my collection if you don’t do what I say. Just like he’s going to. I got to give him some credit, though. He was a clever guy. He tried to warn you about me, but luckily you missed it.”
Fletcher realised then the dead man had tried to warn him from the very beginning when he said the words “initially six or seven” and “initially same old story” and even his name: Stephen O’Shaunessey.
They were all initially the letters SOS.
The man had warned him … but he’d missed it.
The woman was grinning. “I decided to tell you he had kidnapped me because I knew it would make things interesting. Thanks for saving my life, Fletcher. He almost got me.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Because it’s fun.”
“Fun? That’s your reason?”
“Is there a better one?”
He had no answer to that.
“Bring my second bag,” the woman ordered. “You’ll find a saw in it and a fold-out shovel.”
She made him cut off the man’s head, then bury the rest of the body in the desert.
*
Fletcher spent that night handcuffed in the back of his truck while she slept soundly in the cab. The next morning they were on the road again. Fletcher drove for hours wherever the “boy” told him to. Eventually, his captor ordered him to pull over in a stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. She’s going to kill me now, Fletcher thought.
“Get out,” she said.
Outside, it was hot and airless. He could feel the sunlight on his face. Burning.
He waited outside while the insane woman sat in the cool air-conditioned truck drinking lemonade and smoking a cigarette.
He waited.
And waited.
Fletcher looked down the highway and thought he saw the flash of sunlight reflected off a vehicle’s windscreen.
Someone was coming.
The “boy” suddenly climbed out and shoved her gun into his side. “This is what you are going to do, Dad ...”
The Pledge
There was something wrong with the Sigma Delta Sigma members. I noticed it during the first week at Harvard, when everyone was still introducing themselves by their high-school grades and college subjects. (“Hi, my name’s Clive Matheson and I’m majoring in American History.”) The Sigma Delta Sigma fraternity had accepted my best-friend Noah, but I had been rejected. Even if they had accepted my application I could not have afforded the fees, so I wasn’t despondent about the situation. In fact, I was in an amazing mood for about two days, while the excitement of being at Harvard carried me along from one place to another. There were other good educational establishments in America – some no doubt better than Harvard - but Harvard was perceived as the top of the Ivy League, no matter what anyone said. There was nothing quite like Harvard for boosting my self-esteem. Finally, I was somewhere special, which made me feel special. Boston, with all its New England charm and sophistication, was an incredible place. All the hard work through high school had paid off. My week was only spoiled by the fact that I was not sharing my great time with Noah.
At the time I had no idea he would one day try to kill me.
*
That first week, Noah was spending his free time exclusively with his fraternity buddies.
While many other fraternities actually provided cheaper accommodation for their members than looking for someone outside the campus, Sigma Delta Sigma prided itself on its cost. Noah’s family had paid something like $45,000 for the privilege of membership in the fraternity. Sigma Delta Sigma was by far the most expensive on the campus – if your parents were not lawyers or doctors, you had no chance. There was no such thing as equality when it came to the fraternities – you did not even have the right to know why you were rejected.
I knew I stood no chance from the start, but I applied because Noah wanted me to join. One or two people from poor backgrounds were selected, primarily for perceived fairness and to boost the academic record.
I wasn’t picked, but I wasn’t bitter because I did not like the idea of honorary societies. It’s very anti-American in my opinion.
My parents were teachers with liberal views. Noah’s were a Republican judge and a Republican congresswoman, but he had absorbed my political views, to the constant annoyance of his family. I was at Harvard on an academic scholarship; he was there because it was a family tradition dating back aeons. Noah had not been that keen on joining, but since his father was a Sigma Delta Sigma, he had little choice. Noah was as unlike his domineering, arrogant father as you could imagine, but in the first week I saw a change in his personality, almost as though Sigma Delta Sigma had been stamped on his soul. Gone was the affable smile. Gone was the wry humour. Gone was the self-effacing charm.
Noah became a cold and creepy stranger.
I saw Noah twice in that week. No matter what I did to make a conversation – like asking him what he thought of Harvard – Noah answered with one-word answers, if at all. You would not have thought we’d played in a tree house, or become blood brothers. (We had been too young to worry about HIV. I still had the white scar across my palm, where I’d cut too deep.)
Now, I could have understood and accepted the attitude from a fair-weather friend, but not Noah. He was the closest thing I had to a real brother. He was also the only person from my home town in Vermont at Harvard. I felt betrayed and, perhaps, jealous of the way Sigma Delta Sigma had taken him over – and yet completely at a loss when it came to doing something about it.
Noah clearly wanted to fit in with his new friends, so I stayed out of the way, hoping things would get back to normal in another week.
I had plenty of new friends myself and I was getting to know Bridget. Like me, Bridget was not a member of any secretive organisations. She lived in a dorm off the campus, very close to where I was staying. We shared a train ride every morning into Harvard. She told me her friends in the sororities were behaving just like Noah, acting as though no one else counted any more. We really felt like outsiders. It was the childish cliques of high school all over again. It was ridiculous, but what could we do? The Greek System was hundreds of years old. We could not just tear down the institutions, as much as that made sense.
Each time I saw Noah with his new friends, I could not help compare them to a cult. All Sigma Delta Sigma members dressed smartly in grey suits with silver cuff links engraved with the Greek symbols sigma-delta-sigma. They all oozed superiority and wealth by some mysterious process. And they grouped together like a wolf pack. You never saw one alone. Noah was always with someone. It was as though they were watching him, keeping him under control.
Laura, Noah’s girlfriend back in Vermont, who had one year of high school to go, told me he hadn’t contacted her since he left – not a phone call, not a letter, nothing.
I rarely saw Noah for about six months.
Then he left a note in my pigeonhole:
Luke, I’ve got to talk. Can you be inside the Lincoln Library by stack 552c at nine? I’m sorry about acting like a jerk, but I promise I have an explanation. I’ll meet you there. Somethi
ng important to tell you.
Your true friend, Noah Bennick.
“Go figure,” I muttered, surprised and confused. Why now? Was he genuine? I showed Bridget the note and asked for her opinion.
“Beats me, too. Very cloak and dagger. Any idea what it is he must tell you?”
“Something about Sigma Delta Sigma, I imagine. I mean, that society is really scary. Ever since he joined, he’s been … different. I knew there had to be some reason for it. He was just pretending to be like that.”
“So you’re going to be there?”
“Yes.”
“What if it wasn’t just an act? What if he’s playing a joke on you?”
“He wouldn’t do that. Not Noah.”
Bridget raised an eyebrow. She had a way of understating her point more effectively than a long-winded speech.
“Okay, okay, I know I’m being stupid. But he was my best friend for a hell of a long time.”
This time she shrugged. I sighed and put the note in my pocket.
*
I arrived at stack 552c five minutes early and waited for Noah. When Noah did not show up on time, I waited an extra hour anyway, hoping he’d just been delayed. There was something very spooky about the library at night. The semi-darkness, accompanied by the silence, interrupted by soft footfalls from indistinct directions … alone, you hear and imagine things. One hour of waiting and I was desperate to leave. Before I did, I wrote a note saying I’d been there, which I left on a table for Noah, though I felt it a pointless gesture.
It was nearer eleven than ten when I walked out of the exit into the cold night air.
It had rained recently. The ground was slick with pools of water. My Dodge was parked at the far side of the parking lot. There were few other cars parked. I stepped off the sidewalk and walked across the parking lot. As I approached, I wondered why Noah left done this to me. I could not understand the mentality behind it.