—Cait dropped straight down, landing face-first on the bed, falling onto a silk blouse before rolling sideways and crashing to the floor. Her eyes rolled up into her head. She was vaguely aware of Kevin picking her up and cradling her in his arms, calling her name, his panicked voice sounding much too far away, but she was incapable of answering him, incapable even of acknowledging him.
The Flicker roared into her head like a runaway freight train and it was terrifying. The vision was of the man she had seen in yesterday’s awful Flicker. It was the man whose predatory lust had frightened her so badly, the man who had daydreamed about doing twisted, evil, hurtful things to an unsuspecting prostitute with his trusty pair of pliers. It was the man Cait had wanted to notify the police about, but had not done so because she had no proof.
And this Flicker was one hundred times worse. The man was getting down to business.
Bad business.
The young girl was being held prisoner in what appeared to be a small, nearly empty apartment. The place was dingy and threadbare and littered with trash.
The girl had been immobilized, her arms and legs duct-taped securely to a solid, blocky wooden chair. Several strips of the silver duct tape circled her head and covered her mouth, preventing her from crying out, although it was not for lack of trying.
The girl was being tortured. The man had been fantasizing about using his pliers in the previous Flicker, and now he was doing it. And he was using other implements of torture, too. The scene was horrifying. The girl was naked and covered in blood; it flowed from wounds in at least a dozen different places.
Her captor studied her appraisingly, looking exactly like an artist examining his canvas. He tilted his head sideways. Took a step back. Then he advanced, plunging the pliers into his victim, wielding them like some demented sex toy, ripping and tearing the soft flesh of her inner thighs as she bucked and thrashed. Fresh blood flew, splattering the man’s hands and wrists, dripping down the insides of her legs in thick trails.
Cait wanted to avert her eyes, she tried to avert her eyes, tried to close her eyes to the horror, but she couldn’t, because her eyes didn’t matter. She was seeing the ghastly sight with her mind, and there was no shutting down her mind, no closing her mind to a Flicker. She had no choice but to experience it until it ran its course.
She tried to scream, to cry out for help, but she could not. She wondered if she was going mad, sinking into her own personal hell, where she would live out her days doomed to watching this depraved horror show inside her head.
In the Flicker the man continued his torture. He was relentless, stabbing and slicing. The suffering girl’s head whipped back and forth, her face puffy from crying and blotchy from fear and pain. On the floor her clothes had been scattered like wrapping paper around a toddler’s gifts on Christmas morning. Wounds covered her, large and small, all of them red and raw and angry and weeping blood. There was barely a spot on the girl’s entire body that had not been attacked with the awful pliers or with razor-sharp knives.
Finally the suffering victim’s eyes opened widely in an obscene parody of disbelief, as though it had only now occurred to her that something awful was happening to her. She blinked several times, rapidly, as spasms wracked her body. Her muscles contracted and released and contracted and released again, and then her head lolled to the side and back, eyes closed, mouth agape.
And then she was gone.
And so was the Flicker.
And Cait was back. She opened her eyes and saw Kevin, sweet, considerate Kevin, his worried face staring down at her. She was stretched out on the hotel room floor, next to the bed where she had fallen when the Flicker started, lying flat on her back, legs splayed. Kevin crouched next to her, cradling her head in his arms.
She shuddered. Opened her mouth. Tried to speak. All that came out was a terrified husky squeak. She shook her head and realized she was panting, hyperventilating, and tried to slow her breathing but could not. She burst into tears and Kevin lifted her easily in his arms. He kicked the open suitcases to the floor, one after the other. Clothes burst out of them and formed small fluffy hills around the luggage. Then he set her down on the bed and held her as she cried.
After a while—Cait couldn’t say how long; maybe five minutes, maybe thirty—the terror began to abate, and the vision of what she had seen dimmed enough to allow her to concentrate on the here and now. Kevin stroked her hair rhythmically, caressing it, saying nothing, waiting for her, endlessly patient. “Oh, God,” she whispered. She sobbed deeply and she thought she might scream but didn’t.
“Where were you?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know. It looked like it might at one time have been an apartment. It was messy and dirty and in the middle of the room was a chair with a naked girl strapped to it. It was the girl from last night and she was being tortured horribly. I…I think I watched her die…” Cait squeezed her eyes closed as if to ward off the vision, just as she had done during the Flicker, but she was no more successful now than she had been then.
“Oh God,” she said again.
CHAPTER 27
The streets were relatively traffic-free—at least as traffic-free as they ever got in this metropolitan jungle—as Milo cruised toward Everett. Following his play time with the now-deceased Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker, he had wiped the bloodstains off his hands and arms as best he could using a series of dirty towels, then slept fitfully for a short while.
Following the invigorating nap, he clambered up off his air mattress and changed his clothes. Then he walked to the YMCA a few blocks away and showered with the hottest water he could stand, scrubbing the filthy stench of dead prostitute off his body.
Normally Milo could sleep like a baby for twelve to fourteen hours after one of his play sessions, but today was different. Today was special. Rae Ann had become nothing more than the first act, the warm-up band for the rock concert of torture that would soon follow. Milo was determined to introduce himself to the arrogant little bitch who had so recently begun haunting his visions.
His routine—and, in fact, his entire life—had been completely disrupted thanks to the mysterious young woman, and that made Milo nervous. Uncomfortable.
Usually, when entertaining one of his special guests, he was able to make the fun last much longer than it had with Rae Ann, although never as long as he wanted. He inevitably began a session with the best of intentions: to keep the girl alive for as long as possible. Not because he gave a damn about the girl, but rather because his surgical procedures only served to stimulate him while the victim was alive and conscious and thus able to appreciate what was happening to her. Once she was dead or even just passed out, the entire affair was instantly rendered pointless.
So his goal was always to do enough to provide for his own stimulation while not going so far that his guest slipped into unconsciousness, either from pain or blood loss. Eventually, of course, it would always happen. It was inevitable. And often when it did occur, the girl wasn’t just unconscious but dead. Unfortunately, and despite Milo’s best efforts at controlling his urges, he had a habit of becoming so engrossed in his work he was unable to hold back. He would pass the point of no return and lose his victim to eternal darkness.
Today that moment arrived even faster than usual, for the very reason that today Milo did not want to make the fun last. Today he had other business to attend to. He was only playing with Rae Ann because…well…because she was there, and it would be unacceptable to leave home without getting at least a small taste of such a succulent morsel.
So he had hurried things along. The session had still been immensely enjoyable, but varying his routine had taken him outside his comfort zone and had made him feel anxious and upset, like he was trying to keep a secret and was afraid someone else might have learned it.
And he had varied his routine in other ways, too, ways that represented infinitely more risk to Milo than simply making him feel anxious. Typically, when finished with a girl, he would dispose
of the body immediately, even before allowing himself to slip into the comforting cocoon of a good night’s sleep. Normally he played his games in the middle of the night, in part because it added a certain delicious ambiance to the proceedings, but also for the practical reason that it made corpse disposal much easier. He would simply hack off his victim’s arms and legs and stuff everything into garbage bags. Then he would take a midnight stroll, toting the bags to various restaurant Dumpsters around the city.
The only inherent risk was of being stopped by a patrolman while making his “deliveries,” but Milo had long ago discovered that law-enforcement presence in the neighborhoods he haunted was minimal in the middle of the night. Even the cops who did patrol were not inclined to step outside the comfort and safety of their cruisers for anything short of a murder in progress. Milo had more than once been given the stink-eye by a passing cop, but he had never yet come close to being questioned while in possession of body parts.
Thus, the plan was nearly foolproof, if a bit labor-intensive. Restaurant Dumpsters always smelled of rotting food and the addition of one more piece of decomposing garbage would never even be noticed. Plus, they were emptied on a regular basis, meaning the evidence never lingered in the same location for long before being trucked away to wherever the hell restaurant trash went, probably an incinerator somewhere, which served Milo’s purposes perfectly.
That was how it was normally done.
Today, though, was a different story. He had played with Rae Ann in the middle of the day, so utilizing his typical method of disposal would be impossible. Even Milo recognized the danger inherent in carrying a human torso around the city surrounded by throngs of humanity. He would never get away with it.
So he left her taped to the torture chair in his living room. The duct-tape bindings had become moot, of course. It wasn’t like she would be going anywhere now. But with other things on his mind, more important things, Milo didn’t want to waste even a few minutes fussing with a cadaver. He would handle the cleanup when he returned, taking advantage of the soothing cloak of three a.m. darkness to transport Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker to various suitable resting places.
Trash in life, trash in death. There was a certain symmetry there that Milo very much appreciated.
He understood full well he was taking a calculated risk. Leaving a dead body in his living space after hours of torture was hardly the best way to accomplish a long life span outside a jail cell.
It wasn’t very bright.
In fact, it was more than just “not very bright,” it was incredibly, unbelievably stupid and reckless, and those were two traits Milo Cain had gone to great lengths to avoid during his long and successful run as an amateur practitioner of torture. This foolishness was completely out of character for him.
He knew that. He also could not help himself. He was being driven by a compulsion beyond conscious thought. He needed to find the young woman who had been starring in his recent visions and he needed to destroy her, and he needed to do it in the most exceedingly painful manner possible.
The reasons why he needed to do it were beyond Milo’s comprehension, but that did not make them any less real. The compulsion drove him relentlessly, and he knew that the risk he was taking was a worthwhile one, despite the fact he could not explain, even to himself, why that was the case.
So now he navigated the congested city streets in the middle of the day, driving away from the crowds in Boston and toward the crowds in Everett. He felt conspicuous, like a fish out of water, but hoped he looked like just another schmuck on his way to work to begin just another night shift at the factory.
No one paid the slightest attention to him, as far as he could tell, and the anonymity was reassuring. He would not get caught leaving Rae Ann the Schoolgirl Hooker’s rotting corpse in his apartment because, well, because the rest of the people in the world were so caught up in their own little unimportant lives, with their own little unimportant problems, that he could probably walk down the street with a neon sign strapped to his chest flashing the words I KILLED A GIRL AND LEFT HER COOLING BODY IN MY LIVING ROOM! and no one would pay any more attention to him than they were paying right now.
The vehicle he had jacked was modern and comfortable, containing a built-in GPS unit that squawked out directions to 7 Granite Circle, Everett, providing precise turn-by-turn navigation, leading him inexorably to his destination. The Buick’s silver-haired owner, a little old lady who had to be eighty if she was a day, hadn’t put up a fight. In fact she had seemed almost resigned to losing her car, as if she had suspected sooner or later she was going to be car-jacked and today just happened to be the unlucky day.
And, Milo thought, that might well have been the case. An old lady driving a fancy new vehicle in stop-and-go traffic around a crowded city really should know better. All he had had to do was flag her down with a sheepish smile on his face—Jeez, I’m a poor lost tourist and I need a little help!—and yank her out of the car when she stopped. She rolled her window down a few inches and Milo grabbed a fistful of hair, yanking relentlessly until she popped the locks just to get a little relief from the pain. After that, he had simply slid into her place in the driver’s seat and accelerated away while she stood in the middle of the street and watched, not screaming, not complaining, not saying anything at all. Just watching.
Milo felt a twinge of guilt about the whole thing. Car-jacking was wrong and he had not been raised to be a common thief. But certain things in life were important and thus rendered minor issues like stealing some old bat’s car irrelevant, and this was one of them. Besides, he told himself. I’ll dump the car somewhere when I’m finished and it will be returned undamaged to the old lady anyway. I’m just borrowing it for a couple of hours, that’s all. No harm, no foul.
He spun the wheel and listened to the radio—volume down low, so he could still hear the GPS—and followed the flow of traffic, not speeding, not driving recklessly, not doing anything to draw unwanted attention to himself. As anxious as he was to begin his new adventure, this was not the time to make a stupid mistake.
He sang along with Gladys Knight, riding on the Midnight Train to Georgia, pretending to be a Pip, daydreaming about what he would have done to Gladys some dark night in the back of the tour bus, and before he knew it the GPS informed him, “You have arrived at your destination.”
Milo eased into the driveway and looked the house over and knew instantly that the electronic miracle worker had done its job. The number screwed into the weathered siding next to the front door was the right one, but even without the benefit of the brass “7” he would have known. He would recognize this house anywhere. He had memorized every detail of its exterior from his last vision.
Milo shut off the engine and smiled. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. The girl from his visions wasn’t here, he knew that. After all, he had seen her leave with his own eyes, or at least in his own mind, which was the same thing, practically speaking. But he wasn’t worried. Getting her to return wouldn’t be a problem. Not unless she had a soul as black and bitter as his own, and Milo Cain had never met anyone in his three decades on earth who could make that claim.
Gladys Knight serenaded him inside his head as he hurried toward the front door. He was anxious to get started. Time was wasting.
CHAPTER 28
Franklin Marchand climbed the tenement’s rickety back stairs as quietly as he could. He had no small amount of recent life experience in stealth, it being a necessary prerequisite to survival as a vagrant.
Early in his time on the streets, an older homeless man had taken Franklin under his wing and shown him the ropes—how to panhandle without frightening the mark away, how to pick a cheap lock to find shelter during the bitterly cold nights of winter, how to fade into the background of life to avoid drawing the attention of the police—so sneaking around this drafty old building presented little challenge.
Franklin had seen Strange Dude depart earlier, walking resolutely, with a spring
in his step that indicated he had important business to attend to, so there was no danger the man would be inside his apartment when Franklin broke in. But he had no idea where Strange Dude had gone, and thus no idea how long he would be gone. Maybe the guy had only walked to the convenience store on the corner to buy booze and was even now on his way back, the spring in his step only because he was in a hurry to get home and start drinking.
The thought gave Franklin pause. He did not want to be caught by Strange Dude, especially not in his apartment going through his stuff. The guy gave Franklin the creeps, a serious case of the willies, and he had no interest in finding out how the guy would react if he walked into his place to find Franklin with his hands in the cookie jar.
But still, Franklin couldn’t stop thinking about the unsettling situation with the girl last night—Strange Dude forcing her into the tenement building at knifepoint—and all of the other nights when similar things had happened. Something was going on, something bad, Franklin could just tell, and one of the few things he still cared about in this fucked-up world was his little girl. Samantha was twenty-two now, no longer little and not even a girl, she was a full-grown adult woman, but to Franklin she would always be that tiny whirlwind in blonde pigtails running around the house, her bare feet slapping the linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor.
If Strange Dude was raping girls Samantha’s age, or, God forbid, raping and then killing them, Franklin knew he could no longer stand by and allow it to happen. Every young girl was someone’s daughter. More to the point, who was to say the next young girl to be ushered up here at knifepoint wouldn’t be his daughter?
That was assuming his suspicions were even correct. Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the things Franklin had seen. For the life of him he couldn’t imagine what that explanation might be, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be one.
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