by Blake Crouch
“I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know what he wants,” I lied.
“I killed this homeless man,” Violet said, and I could hear the tears in her voice.
“I heard everything,” I said. “That wasn’t you. He forced your hand with Max.”
“We’re going to die,” she said. “Aren’t we?”
I couldn’t bring myself to answer that.
“There’s this part of me that thinks we’re still up in the Yukon,” she said. “Living in those woods. Just you, me, and Max. And that this is all a terrible nightmare. We could’ve been so happy.”
“I know.”
“We could’ve been a family.”
Tears ran down the sides of my face.
“No matter what happens,” I said, “when he comes back, just hold onto this—I love you, Violet.”
“I love you, Andy.”
“There is nothing he can do to touch that.”
Violet
OUT of the darkness, a light appeared, shining down into her face from the ceiling thirty or forty feet above her head.
Her first instinct was to crane her neck to the left so she could finally see Andy, but she couldn’t move her head.
It made no difference.
If she stared straight ahead, an enormous mirror leaning against the wall reflected the two of them, ten feet apart and strapped to identical wooden gurneys.
Andy was naked.
His skin held a sickly, gray pallor, and his right leg was covered in blood.
Beside the mirror, a door in the wall swung inward.
Luther appeared.
She felt an anticipation not dissimilar to the fear she’d always known sitting on the thin sheet of paper in the doctor’s office, waiting on the doctor to arrive.
Luther stood at a control panel mounted to a small cart, equidistant from the chairs.
As he turned several knobs, Violet felt her chair begin to vibrate.
Luther approached.
He set a small remote control in her left hand and positioned her finger over the single red button.
Said, “Don’t drop this now. No matter what.”
“I did exactly what you told me. Where’s Max?”
He said nothing, just stared down at her.
“I want to see my son!”
“I understand that.”
“Well?”
“That might be a touch difficult to arrange.”
Her stomach fell away.
“What are you talking about?”
“Max is with his new mommy and daddy now.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Max’s cries were previously recorded. I sold him, Violet. Four days ago. For seven thousand dollars. I’d have taken five.”
“To who?” She shrieked the words.
“His name’s Javier, but that’s really neither here nor there. Just think of it this way...now he’ll grow up with a daddy, too.”
Violet wept from her core, and Luther just watched her, soaking in her misery like it was sunshine.
“Tell me about it,” he said finally.
“What are you talking about?” she cried.
“Killing Matthew.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Well, he’s dead, right?”
“Yes.”
“So how’d he get that way?”
“Don’t pretend like you weren’t listening to every word.”
“You better make a fucking effort here.”
“I stabbed him through the heart.”
“Okay.”
“And he died right away.”
“Did his blood get on you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you taste it?”
“No!”
“It’s worth trying for the experience. Did you look into his eyes while he died?”
“What?”
“Did you look into his eyes while he—”
“Yes.”
“You watched the emptiness come into them.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that’s the moment I live for? Not saying there’s isn’t much fun to be had arriving at that emptiness, but the moment it comes....holy fuck. I hope it wasn’t lost on you. What else?”
“What else what? I don’t understand what you want to hear!”
Andy said, “He wants to hear you say you liked it.”
Luther turned and glared over at Andy, then reached under Violet’s armrest and disengaged something.
She felt the armrest come loose.
Luther swung it around so her left arm was stretched back behind her head.
He performed the same operation on the right armrest.
In the mirror, she watched as he knelt down at the base of the gurney and slid out a steel platform which housed a system of cables, gears, and pulleys. This, he locked into place just behind her wrists, and resecured them with a pair of nylon restraints that he cinched down so hard the tips of her fingers began to tingle with blood loss. He clipped the new restraints into a locking carabiner.
Next, he attended to her ankles, trading the padded-leather restraints for nylons.
She wanted to ask what he was doing but feared the answer.
When he’d finished with her, Luther moved Andy into the same position and then returned to the cart between the two of them.
He stared down at the control panel for a moment before turning his attention to Violet.
“Are you familiar with the rack?” he asked.
She was.
Discovery Channel.
Several years ago.
A special on the Inquisition that, in spite of her profession as a homicide detective, had given her nightmares for a week.
“Torture isn’t what it used to be,” he said. “Somehow, the infliction of pain has gotten a reputation as barbaric. And I think that’s tragic. We learn about ourselves through all intensities, not the least of which is pain.”
Luther turned something on the control panel, and Violet felt the nylon restraints begin to tighten.
The vertebrae in her spine cracked, the pressure building as the quarter-inch gauge cable tugged her arms and legs in opposing directions.
The tension had just become uncomfortable when the gears stopped turning.
“Just so we’re clear, you both understand the concept behind the rack?”
No one answered.
“Andy?”
“The purpose is to pull the appendages, stretching them until dislocation occurs.” Violet detected the strain in Andy’s voice. “Once the joints are separated, severe muscle damage occurs. Many victims of the rack, who weren’t subsequently executed, never had the use of their arms and legs again.”
The unstoppable weight of terror pushed into Vi.
“I did what you asked,” she said. “I killed that man.”
“Yes, you did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now you’re both holding a remote control in your left hand, and I took the liberty of placing your thumbs on the buttons. Only one of the racks can turn at a time. Andy, we’ll start with you. When the pain becomes too much, you can stop the stretching by simply pressing that button. But you must know that when your machine stops, Violet’s starts. Violet, when the pain becomes too much for you to bear, feel free to transfer your agony back to Andy.”
“Luther,” Andy said. “Please—”
“Don’t you dare beg this piece of shit,” Violet said.
Luther laughed. “There’s the girl I love.”
Andy
IN the mirror’s reflection, I could see the gears begin to turn beneath the gurney.
So, so slowly.
The pressure-build almost unnoticeable.
Gentle even.
Then my bare feet began to point toward the wall and I felt my lats elongating.
Still no more painful than an early-morning stretch.
Only a stretch th
at never eased.
The muscle- and joint-tension continuing to build, and now the first impulse to fight against that steady pulling overcame me, and I tugged against the cables, my elbows and knees bending slightly at the joints.
The tension relieved for three beautiful seconds, and then the relentless pull of the cables straightened them back out.
God.
Now there was pain.
Manageable, but growing, and for the first time in the last few hours, I forgot what Luther had done to my leg.
The sensation was of my calves and the muscles in my back beginning to rip, but that pain was almost instantly eclipsed by the incomprehensible pressure in my knees and elbows.
Joints extending and then hyperextending.
I heard myself grunting.
Saw Violet’s face in the mirror, watching mine.
Beyond terror.
She was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t hear anything over the straining in my voice getting louder with each passing second.
“Luther,” I said through my teeth. “All right, turn it off.”
Sweat trickled down into my eyes and now I felt what could only be the cartilage beginning to stretch, and the pain was like a thousand needles sliding into my joints.
“Please!”
Through the sheet of tears, I could see the blurred image of Luther standing between the gurneys, watching me.
Each micron of time, the pain and the pull intensifying, and I realized I was screaming, and that nothing I had ever experienced had approached this level of complete agony.
Press the button, it’ll stop.
Press the button, Andy.
You’re being ripped apart.
You’ll take the pain back from her, but you just need a moment of relief.
A moment to think.
I felt my finger depress the button on the remote control.
The noise and hum beneath my gurney stopped, and that bright, cutting pain retreated.
I was gasping for breath, and I looked at Violet in the mirror, saw her watching me, tears running down her face as the cables began to stretch her feet.
“Push the button, Vi,” I said.
“No.”
“Vi—”
“I can take it, Andy.”
“No, you can’t. Give it back to me.”
I pressed my button, but nothing happened.
I could hear Vi straining now, fighting against that first uncomfortable tug.
In the mirror—her face the definition of dread.
“Luther, what do you want?” I said.
“This.”
“But this will be over soon.”
“Define soon.”
“You know what I mean. Eventually, we’ll be dead.”
“Please shut up, Andy. I’m trying to enjoy—”
“You want more than this, Luther.”
Violet groaned.
Her head was still immobilized and she stared into the ceiling, eyes bulging with disbelief.
Her groan became a high-pitched squeal—she was screaming through clenched teeth.
“Luther, stop it!” I screamed, and then, “Violet, push the button!”
Her scream became full-voiced, and it entered me like a knife in the gut, and then the thought came as a prayer, I just want to die.
The pain returned, somehow more brilliant than before, the machine vibrating beneath me as the gears resumed their terrible revolutions.
Now Vi was shouting my name, begging me to give back the pain and everything in my being was screaming for my thumb to push the button and oblige her, to stop these cables from tearing me apart.
The words must have been buried deep in my subconscious—I couldn’t recall having ever thought them—but suddenly I was scream-shouting, “I’LL BE HIM, LUTHER! PLEASE GOD STOP THIS! I’LL BE HIM! I’LL BE ORSON! I’LL BE MY BROTHER! I SWEAR TO GOD!”
I must have blacked out.
When I opened my eyes, my arms and legs burned but the tension was gone and the gurney no longer hummed beneath me.
I blinked through the tears.
Luther’s face was inches from mine.
Pale. Unblemished. Ageless.
His black eyes brimming with something I’d never seen in them before—real emotion.
Rage.
Confusion.
A bottomless sorrow.
“You miss him, don’t you?” I asked.
“Are you fucking with me?”
“Luther—”
“You think this is pain? I can break your mind.”
“Listen to me. Do you know what my life has been these last several years? What Orson, what you have tried to make me? And I fought it and I fought it and I fought it…and now I’m done. Fucking done. We were twins, Luther. Do you understand that bond? Since his death, I’ve felt Orson inside of me, and he’s just been getting stronger.”
“You’d say anything to escape this pain.”
“Maybe that’s true. Or maybe what you said about pain is true. How it can make us learn about ourselves. And I’ve experienced nothing from you and my brother in the last eight years but pain. Physical, emotional, psychological.”
Vi said, “Andy, nothing you say is going to—”
“Shut the fuck up! Do you remember, Luther, what you said to me in the desert all those years ago?”
He just stared at me.
“You told me, ‘We all want blood.’ And you know what? You were right.”
I could see the wheels beginning to turn.
Traction.
I said, “You miss him, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He said it with no emotion but for the faintest glimmer of heartbreak in his eyes.
“You think my twin and I don’t share some core, elemental chemistry?”
“You’re lying.”
“Have you read my books?”
“They’re just that, Andy. Books. And how long did you scream that they didn’t reflect what was really inside of you?”
“You think it’s easy coming to terms with this?”
“You’re lying.”
“Let me prove it.”
This provoked a smile.
“You think this is bullshit?” I asked.
“I kind of do.”
“I won’t kill her.”
“Excuse me?”
“I won’t kill Violet,” I said. “But I’ll hurt her. Bad.”
His black eyes bored into me.
“This is real, Luther. This is happening. I know you’re lonely. There aren’t many out there like us. Who share our view of the world. It’s hard. But I’m there with you.”
“No one’s with me.”
“Well if you never trust, then you’ll never know.”
“I’ve never trusted anyone, Andy. Not even your brother.”
“But you loved him. As much as you’re capable of loving anything beyond your own gratification.”
He looked at Violet.
I told myself as the words streamed out of my mouth that it was all a lie. The only way to save us.
“Don’t tell me this isn’t what you want, Luther. A connection with someone else like you. You aren’t completely inhuman.”
The pain was flowing back into my legs and arms.
The strap across my forehead digging into my skin.
“You’re going to hurt her,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you.”
“Yes. And then you’ll let her go.”
“But she’ll come back. She’ll look for this place. For me and for—”
“No,” I said. “I promise you. She will never come back.”
I could barely stand. It had been days.
The muscles in my legs as taut as steel cables.
He’d just jammed a syringe-full of painkiller into the side of my leg, and the effect couldn’t come quickly enough.
Luther had to help me across the concrete floor, ice-co
ld against the bare soles of my feet.
We stopped at the side of Violet’s gurney, and I stared down at her.
Heard her grunting against the pull.
“Andy,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I looked at Luther as the drug hit my bloodstream.
The pain evaporated.
Clarity.
I stood on my own now. I stood taller.
“Don’t move from this spot,” Luther said.
He walked back to the control panel and pushed the cart over.
I reached down and touched her face, tears shimmering on the surface of her eyes like pools of liquid glass.
“Andy.” He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me over to the control panel and the rack of tools.
He guided my hands onto what resembled a mixing board.
The dials and equalizers were grouped in sections identified by white labels scrawled upon with black Magic Marker.
HEAT.
COLD.
PRESSURE.
ELECTRICITY.
PERFORATION.
ABRASION.
“Hurting the one you love,” he said, “takes real strength. Ask her what she’s most afraid of.”
“What are you most afraid of, Violet?”
“Andy—”
“Here are your options: heat, cold, pressure, electricity, perforation, abrasion.”
“Andy, what are you doing?”
“He’s embracing what he’s been fighting his entire life.”
“What’s that, Luther?” she asked.
“Truth.”
“This isn’t truth, Andy.”
“Do you want to live, Violet?”
“Yes.”
“Then I have to do this.”
“This is just one more game of his. Neither of us are going to survive this.”
“I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry you ever met me. That I came into your life. I mean that. Now choose.”
She closed her eyes, her body shaking with sobs.
“Choose for her,” Luther whispered in my ear.
“Fine. Heat,” I said. “How does this work?”
“These ten dials manage the conduction of heat to the electrodes in the gurney—two per leg, two per arm, one on the head, a big panel flush against her back. They can heat to eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Turn a glowing orange. Beyond eight hundred, the heat panels can’t stop the wood from igniting.”
I looked up at Luther.
Lightheaded, weightless.
“You want this,” he said to me. “You’ve always wanted this.”