“Let me go!” Connor shouted over and over until it became one long word. “Letmegoletmegoletmegoletmegoletmego!”
The hair on Sydney’s arms stood on end and she glanced at Xander who looked equally as spooked. “Can anyone hear him from here?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Probably not this time of night. The closest people live in the neighborhood behind us and they’re are a good quarter mile away.”
Sydney remembered the first time she came here when she and Xander watched the kid doing crazy karate moves by himself in his backyard. Can we go back to then? she thought desperately to herself. Connor continued to yell, his words becoming an incomprehensible jumble of sounds.
“Lemethgomeththggooooggg.”
The sound of his voice spun around her head causing her to feel dizzy and sick to her stomach. “Shut up,” Sydney told him, her voice not nearly loud enough for him to hear over his own rambling. “Just shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!” her voice grew louder each time she spoke until her words became a mantra as loud as his. When Xander gripped her shoulder she realized she was crouching in front of Connor with her fists clenched at her sides and she was screaming the same words over and over again. Xander stared at her with wide, fearful eyes. Connor had gone silent. How long ago she didn’t know.
She gasped for air and stood next to Xander. Connor stared up at them looking confused and hurt. Like a little boy who had lost his puppy and they had just told him it was never coming back. After a few moments of silence between the three of them, Xander finally spoke. “You’re Connor, right?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t know?” Xander asked him.
“Y-yes,” he said with a little more confidence.
“Why are you here?”
“Amber…”
“Amber sent you?”
“No…”
“Then why?”
“I saw you.”
“Where?”
“Amber.”
“You saw us at your apartment?” Connor nodded. “How did you find us here?”
“Back of bed.”
“What?”
“Truck.”
Xander stared at him trying to make sense of his words. “You got in my truck?” Connor nodded. “Shit,” Xander looked at Sydney. “It must have been while we were talking after we left the apartment. I didn’t even see him get out here.”
Obviously, neither of us did, she thought to herself but didn’t say it. A part of her was afraid if she spoke she would be ranting the same words over and over again.
“Why?” Xander asked Connor.
“Different.”
“What’s different?”
“No.”
“Oh my god! This is worse than talking to Pan,” Xander looked to Sydney. He held his hands up helplessly and she wet her lips.
Finally finding her words, she looked to Connor. “Who is different?”
“You,” Connor growled and pulled his legs underneath him before lurching forward as far as the chains would allow him.
Even though he wasn’t able to get close, Sydney still stepped back. “How am I different?” Connor didn’t speak, he just tilted his head as if he was trying to figure out what she was saying, as if he didn’t understand her words. “Why am I different?” He still didn’t answer. Sydney resisted the urge to shake Connor until he finally answered her questions.
“What happened to you?” Xander asked.
Connor opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Only sound. And the sounds he made were little more than croaks and clicks. Sydney’s blood was like ice in her veins and she stopped breathing when blood dripped from Connor’s nose to splash onto his dirty shirt. It looked like he hadn’t bathed in weeks and he definitely smelled like it. She couldn’t help but imagine herself as this man. Unkempt, incoherent and confused.
“What happened to you?” Xander repeated.
Connor tried to speak again but a high pitched whine was the only sound that he made. Like a tea kettle whistling, the sound was one long continuous note wheezing out of him. When his face turned red, Sydney thought he was running out of air but as his features twisted painfully she realized that he was struggling. His words seemed to be stuck inside him and the whistle was their scream for help. With a groan he went silent and slumped against the pole behind him.
“I don’t think he can tell us.”
Xander looked at her with baffled fear. “What the hell is making him unable to talk?”
Syd shook her head. “I don’t know. What—who—knew I was going to lose my memory?”
“What the fuck is going on?” Xander raked his fingers through his hair.
Sydney’s body began to shake uncontrollably and when he noticed, Xander pulled her into his arms. “Shhh, it’s OK.”
She pulled back enough to look him in the face. “Really? You think so?” she asked him flatly.
“OK. Honestly? I don’t have a fucking clue. But, you aren’t alone.”
For once, Sydney was one hundred percent glad Xander was there. Alone, Connor probably would have killed her. Even if she had fought him off, she wouldn’t have been able to subdue him enough to ask him questions. And, if she was honest with herself, she really didn’t want to be alone right now.
The sound of Connor gagging startled them both. They turned to their hostage to see him sitting up straight but his whole body was jerking. Blood continued to dribble from his nose and around his mouth like a gory goatee. But even more unsettling was his eyes. They were rolled back into his head so hard only the whites showed. His teeth snapped open and shut chewing at the air and Sydney could see his tongue curled back into his throat causing the gagging sound. “Shit, he’s having a seizure,” she said.
“What do we do?’
“I don’t think there is anything we can do.”
His fit only lasted maybe a minute before his whole body went slack. Connor slumped to the side and a combination of blood and drool dribbled to the concrete floor.
“I need a drink,” Xander announced.
“Me too.”
“I’m going to make a liquor store run,” he said.
It sounded ridiculous, the idea of leaving to buy booze at a time like this. But Sydney understood how he felt. The situation was so bizarre, unsettling and overwhelming, he just wanted to go somewhere else. It was a childish desire to leave the mess for someone else to clean up. And Sydney knew he wasn’t leaving it for her, because he had her hand pulling her towards the door. They both backed away, afraid to take their eyes off Connor even though he was clearly unconscious.
In the truck they rode in silence, their hands clenched in a death grip. They hadn't even let go to get in the truck. Xander had pulled her towards the driver’s side and guided her across the seat. The bones in her hand were beginning to hurt, but she didn’t care. Taking a deep, shuddering breath she spoke softly. “I don’t understand what is going on.”
“I don’t either.”
“It’s clearly something neurological. Bloody noses, dizziness, amnesia, hallucinations, mood swings, violence, seizures…”
“But who could be responsible?”
Sydney knew they had given up on this being a random act of nature. It couldn’t be some superbug grown from antibiotic resistant viruses. Could it? “Why did he say I was different?” Xander didn’t have an answer, he only raised her hand to his mouth and pressed the back of it to his lips giving her a warm distraction. “I mean,” she sighed. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad I’m different from him. But...I don’t get it. Why am I different? What is different about me? Why aren’t I like him and Pan? Or Short Man. I’m assuming he fits into this scenario too.”
“I don’t know,” Xander admitted.
Sydney wanted to run, with or without Xander. She wanted to get on a bus and ride until she couldn’t go any further. But something told her They would still find her. And she would only have left her friends to get hurt in her place.
“We�
�re going to figure this out,” Xander assured her.
“Yeah? What’s your plan?”
“For tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Get so drunk that I don’t care we have a crazy geek chained in the garage.”
“That sounds fantastic.”
Thirty minutes later they approached the garage slowly, expecting to see flashing light of police cars. If someone had heard his yelling and cared enough to call the cops they would be here by now. But the area was quiet and cop-free. A part of Sydney hoped they would find that Connor had managed to escape and was no longer their problem. And that would be much better than what they actually found. When she saw the pool of blood, blossoming away from Connor’s feet, her first thought was, How can his nose be bleeding that bad? But the question was immediately followed by stupefying terror. Connor was still chained to the support beam, but if his nose was still bleeding they had no way of knowing—because his entire head was missing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Both Sydney and Xander were struck immobile and silent as they stared at Connor’s corpse. Syd was surprised by how much his neck looked like raw meat, and that thought was followed immediately by two realizations—one, that she would probably never be able to eat hamburger again and—two, that she was one depraved individual since that was her first thought. As her shock began to wear off, her stomach churned. “Oh, fuck,” she moaned quietly thinking of Conner’s mother.
“Yeah.”
“What the hell do we do?”
“Well, first, let’s see who did this.”
“How?” Sydney turned to Xander, glad to no longer be looking at Connor.
“Security cameras,” he looked at her with a self-satisfied glint to his eye.
“You have security cameras?”
“I’ve had them for years but rarely bothered to use them. I turned them on though after Short Man disappeared.”
Relieved to not have to deal with Connor for a while, Sydney followed Xander into his office. While he booted up his computer she poured them drinks, rum and coke for her and whiskey straight for Xander. Sydney was afraid to guess at what they would find on the cameras. She took a deep drink and let out a long breath.
“Here we go,” Xander nodded at the screen and she moved closer. He wrapped his arm around her waist and she was glad for the support. She leaned against him watching as he opened the program to view the security footage. Her hands were shaking so bad she could barely hold her drink. A question bubbled to the top of her mind and she hesitated to ask, but finally the words came out on their own.
“Why didn’t you mention you had turned the cameras on?”
Xander didn’t look at her for a moment. Finally, he sighed and spoke. “Well, I didn’t actually think too much about it. I turned them on just in case, then didn’t really think about it again.”
“And?”
“And, well, do I really have to say it…?”
“You didn’t trust me…”
“Don’t put it like that.”
“How else should I say it?” She wanted to feel outraged and indignant, but she found she didn’t blame him.
“It’s not like I think you are lying or doing...I don’t know. Whatever. I just thought...what if you were sleepwalking or going into a trance or hallucinating or something? I guess, I thought maybe catching it on camera might help.”
“Sure,” Sydney nodded.
“Stop!” Xander turned away from the computer and gripped her waist. “You know I trust you. If I didn’t I wouldn’t be helping you. I wouldn’t be sleeping next to you.”
“I know.” And Sydney did. But, she realized, his recording her without her knowledge hit upon her own distrust of herself, and that was what hurt the most. That she really couldn’t trust herself.
Xander knew that arguing wouldn’t make her feel better, so he did her a favor by letting it go and returning to the computer and camera footage. He clicked on the video square that was the feed from the garage. Currently, she could see Connor’s body slumped over straining against the chain that held him in place. The footage was clear enough to see the drops that fell from his neck and she could see the subtle disturbance in the surface of the pooling blood as the drops landed. She shuddered and looked away.
“When did we leave?” Xander asked.
“Uh, about forty-five minutes ago?”
Xander clicked a point on the buffer bar and the footage snapped back to them talking to Connor. He clicked a point further along and they were backing away from Connor and towards the door. Sydney noted how spooked they both looked and relived the eerie feeling their interrogation had left them with.
After they left Connor remained slumped over and drooling after his seizure, but they were only gone for about five minutes before the door opened again. Sydney’s blood turned cold as they watched a man step cautiously into the room.
“Didn’t we locked the door?” Syd asked.
“It should have locked behind us,” Xander mumbled.
If the man had been dressed all in black or carrying weapons of some kind, Sydney would have been less surprised. But he wore khakis and a button down shirt of a pale, indeterminate color due to the black and white footage. Furthermore, if he had stealthily moved with assurance and purpose, Sydney would have been less weirded out. Instead, he came in carefully and seemed to be listening for a sign anyone else was in the building. He also looked unlike any nefarious villain Syd had ever seen on TV. He had short dark hair, glasses and a friendly enough face. If she wasn’t watching him creep towards Connor while carrying a duffle bag, she would have guessed he was a banker or something as equally innocuous.
The man leaned down and tilted to the side to get a look at Connor’s face. Syd didn’t know what he was looking for, or if he had found it, but the man stepped back and set his bag on the floor. He unzipped it and pulled out something that looked like a large white sack. It wasn’t until the man shook it clear and began stepping into that she realized it was some sort of coverall suit. The kind painters were sometimes...or something similar to a hazmat suit. As bile built up in Sydney’s throat she realized what the man was doing.
Zipped into his protective suit he pulled something else out of the bag. “Oh, man,” she grimaced when she saw that it was a handheld saw.
“Shit,” Xander whispered.
Sydney was glad the footage didn’t have sound when the man approached Connor. When he began dragging the saw blade and forth across Connor’s neck and when the blood arched away from his throat she had to turn away. If she had heard the sound it would have surely made her throw up. The worst part, surprisingly, was the fact that Connor didn’t struggle. Unable to stop herself, Syd glanced at the screen several times, and each time Connor remained slumped and passive, even when the blood poured down his front as if it was water from a pitcher. Sydney didn’t know how she managed to not throw up, but she suspected it was from the detachment she was got from watching the act on the computer. Seeing it on a screen gave it a disconnection that didn’t trigger a natural response.
The man must have felt pressed for time because he began moving quickly. He stripped off the suit and stuffed it into a garbage bag, he then stuck everything back into his duffle bad. Finally, he retrieved another garbage bag that he shook open and held over the head. He gingerly lifted it by the hair and looked closely into Connor’s face. She was glad that she could only see the back of the head and not the front. Sydney narrowed her eyes when the man jumped and practically threw it into the bag before spinning it and tying a knot in the neck. Job done, the man hurried from the garage.
“Who the hell was that?” she asked, not expecting a real answer.
“You’ve never seen him before?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why did he take the head?”
“Hell if I know.”
“He was apparently watching us though.”
“I know.” It was obvious. He came in after they left an
d got out before they returned.
“Do you think this is who you have been running from?”
“I-I don’t know. If it is...why did he come in, take Connor’s head and then leave?”
“Why hasn’t he made a move for you?”
Sydney shrugged. “That’s what I mean!” her frustration was turning to anger and outrage. “I am so tired of this!”
“I know.” Xander rested his head in his hands. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Apparently, he’s watching me. Observing me...for some reason,” she said and realized that felt right.
“Does he think you are going to do something? Is he waiting on you to do something?”
She shook her head unable to answer. “If this is a virus, or—” she shuddered again, “—a parasite, or something, he must be a part of whoever is responsible.”
“Right. I wish we could get him,” Xander tapped the screen. He has paused it on a decent view of the man’s face as he looked back over his shoulder while hurrying through the door.
Sydney tried to interpret the look on his face objectively even though she knew it was impossible. Even though the man had just committed a horrible and atrocious act, he looked excited. “Rewind it for a second,” she told Xander.
“Why?” he sounded surprised and a little grossed out at the idea of seeing any of that again.
“Did you notice how he...like...jumped when he was holding the head up?”
“Uh, not really,” he admitted.
“He was looking, studying it, being careful. But then he jumped and just threw the head in the bag. Rewind it, you’ll see.” It took a few tries but finally Xander found the right spot. “Watch,” she pointed at the screen.
Carefully detaching herself from the whole and focusing only on the smaller part of the man’s face, Sydney was able to forget what he was doing. She hated that the quality of the camera was bad enough she couldn’t see details in his face. But she was able to see him switch from examination to reaction as his face twitched before tossing the dismembered head into the bag. “What was that?” she muttered out loud.
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