Merciless

by Bryan Smith

  The mountain man spoke again while she was still scrambling for something to say. “Many years ago, after getting out of penitentiary that last time, I did some cold-hearted things, too. I had the voice of the devil in my head, telling me what to do.”

  Another expectant silence ensued.

  Lindsey swallowed with difficulty. “What . . . what kind of cold-hearted things?”

  He might have smiled then, but it was difficult to tell with the thick tangle of whiskers around his mouth. “I murdered my whole family. Butchered them. My wife. My son. Ma and Pa. One cold night when the thunder was so loud I thought it would crack my head open.”

  Lindsey let out a breath and kept working hard to maintain some semblance of composure. “Okay, so I’ve done bad things. You have, too. So we’re, what . . . sort of even, right? We could both just walk away from this, pretend it never happened.”

  The mountain man shook his head. “The devil doesn’t want that. He wants something else of us.”

  Lindsey made an exasperated sound. “And what, pray tell, would that fucking be?”

  This time he definitely smiled, his mouth opening wide to reveal several gaps between the remaining rotten yellow teeth. “The devil says I’ve been alone too long. That it’s time I took a bride.”

  He took a step toward her.

  That decided things for Lindsey. It was time to bolt.

  She gave the mountain man as wide a berth as she could manage as she made a break for the open door, but he again surprised her with his preternatural quickness, stopping her cold when he snagged hold of her wrist. She cried out in surprise and pain and tried swiping at him with the knife. He sent the knife flying from her hand with a flick of the machete. It landed on the floor with a clatter, sliding well out of reach beneath the table. She tried twisting out of his grip and flailing against him, but he held her in place with effortless ease.

  His mouth opened wider as he pulled her close, causing her to gag at his rancid breath. “I’ve seen the way you can fly, little lady. I’ll take you as my bride, but I can’t have you running out on me. And there’s only one way of dealing with a woman inclined to run. You gotta make it so she can’t run.”

  Another swing of the machete took her left arm off a few inches below the shoulder. She screamed even before the pain hit her and screamed again when it did. It was so much worse than she’d ever imagined something like that would be. The arm the blade had taken was the one he’d been gripping by the wrist. He tossed it aside as she wheeled away from him, spraying blood all over the floor from her arm stump. She tried running for the door again, but did so blindly this time, tripping over the body of the headless girl.

  The mountain man grabbed hold of her by an ankle and dragged her to an open area of the floor, turning her onto her stomach so he could pin a knee to the small of her back. He pulled a rough leather cord from an inner pocket of his coat and tied it around her arm stump, cinching it painfully tight to stem the flow of blood. Even through the overwhelming pain, there was a faint sense of relief in knowing she wasn’t going to bleed out right away.

  Then he raised the machete again and brought it down

  Lindsey screamed again as the blade chopped through her right arm and bit into the wooden floor beneath. He still had her pinned to the floor as he produced another of the leather cords from his jacket and tied-off the second arm stump. As he climbed off her, Lindsey had a pretty good idea what was coming next. It terrified her, but she was now beyond powerless to stop it.

  Two more efficient swings of the machete removed her feet just above the ankles. Lindsey was crying ceaselessly by then and begging for mercy. Again, he used rough leather cords to tie off the stump wounds.

  His knees creaked as he flipped her onto her back and got to his feet. He smiled again as she looked up at him and tearfully pleaded for her life.

  “I done told you, pretty lady. I’m not gonna kill you. You’re my bride. And this here’s our wedding night. Now, don’t worry none. We’ll cauterize them stumps and give you plenty of healing time before we consummate the marriage.” He indicated the squalling infant and the headless body of the girl with separate tilts of his chin. “A man has needs, of course. Tonight I’ll spill my seed in Ichabod Jane over there. The baby will give us a head start on the big ol’ family we’re gonna have together. Smile, girl. This is a happy night.”

  Lindsey started screaming then and didn’t stop until her lungs were raw.

  The mountain man went into the kitchen to turn on the stove.

  33

  PLAYING DEAD WAS THE ONLY method of protection available to Jorge when the mountain man invaded the cabin. He tried his best to remain absolutely still and not make a sound, an effort that included making his breathing as shallow as possible. Forcing himself not to cough was the hardest part, as having the woman’s panties lodged in his mouth meant his gag reflex was close to being triggered almost constantly. Somehow, however, he managed to keep the urge in check, though he endured countless close calls. The easiest part was controlling the pain. After enduring such extreme levels of agony throughout the evening, it wasn’t difficult to relegate the current somewhat lesser level of steady throbbing to the background.

  At no point did he truly believe the effort would succeed. He expected the wild-looking stranger to check him out in at least a cursory way at some point, probably killing him after confirming he was still among the living, but that did not happen. The man being so intensely focused on the woman who shot Jorge with the tranquilizer gun at the start of this long nightmare was another big factor in his survival. Also, at a glance, he probably looked dead, with his face covered in dried blood and another person’s scalp stitched to his head. The guy probably gave him one look, dismissed him as already gone, and kept his attention on more interesting pursuits.

  Playing dead did not prevent him from occasionally glimpsing the atrocities taking place in the cabin. He watched surreptitiously through slitted eyes whenever he could, closing them completely any time he sensed the intruder might turn in his direction. Observing events this way meant he missed some things, but he saw more than enough to confirm the invader was at least as deranged as his abductors, perhaps even more so. Not too long ago he would’ve found the concept of anyone more evil than the sadistic young couple difficult if not impossible to believe.

  Then he watched in sickened disbelief as the stranger methodically amputated Lindsey’s limbs and quickly applied makeshift tourniquets to all of them to keep her from bleeding out. He watched again as the mountain man disrobed and copulated with the headless corpse of the younger girl while the stove was heating up in the kitchen. Then came the stench of burning human flesh as Lindsey was dragged screaming into the kitchen to have her stumps cauterized.

  Jorge felt no compassion or sympathy for Grant and Lindsey. They were evil people who’d caused him tremendous pain and richly deserved the suffering they received in return. His hatred of them, however, did not make him blind to the inhuman actions of the deranged stranger. They were vile acts only a monster in human guise could perform. The man had said something about the devil talking to him in his head. After all he’d seen and heard, Jorge found that easy to believe.

  The young girl’s fate was another matter. While she’d done a horrendous thing to him, he did feel some level of sympathy for her. She wasn’t much more than a kid, really. A terrified kid who felt compelled to do awful things in exchange for a promise of continued survival. She wasn’t entirely without blame, of course, and there was definitely a limit to his sympathy, but she’d been tortured and threatened without mercy. There weren’t many people in this world who could go through what she had and come out of it smelling like roses.

  At some point, the mountain man dragged Lindsey outside. Jorge could still faintly hear her sounds of suffering, but they were muffled now, as if they were coming from inside a box or coffin. The more likely explanation was that he’d stashed her in one of the vehicles outside. Jorge hoped he would
soon hear the sound of an engine starting up and then driving away, but that didn’t happen.

  Within a few minutes, the mountain man came back into the cabin. At that point, he was still naked, his filthy old clothes discarded in a pile on the floor. He did not put them back on, choosing instead to spend a significant amount of time ransacking the place, downstairs and upstairs. At one point, Jorge heard a sound of water running and guessed the man was taking his first shower in possibly decades.

  Jorge tried his best to remain alert while all this was happening, but he soon found himself drifting back toward unconsciousness. He did his best to pull himself back from the brink numerous times, but eventually he succumbed and fell into a state of deep sleep.

  When he next awakened, the first faint rays of dawn were visible through the window by the door. He squinted his eyes against the light until they adjusted and instinctively tried to yawn, instead gagging on the panties still in his mouth. Grimacing, he realized how fortunate he was not to have choked to death on them while he was asleep. It was something of a miracle it hadn’t happened.

  Once he was no longer squinting, he spent some time assessing the situation as best he could given his current limitations. Obviously several hours had passed, something he would have guessed even without the dim light coming through the window. He could tell in his body, in his bones, and in the renewed strength in his muscles. The pain was still ever-present and significant, but there was no denying the difference the hours of sleep had made. He felt ready to fight for his life again, which he had every intention of doing given even half a chance.

  The mountain man’s grubby old clothes were still in a discarded heap on the floor, but there was no other indication he might still be around. The girl’s headless body was no longer in its former position on the floor, nor was her head. The corpse had either been moved elsewhere in the cabin, dragged and dumped outside, or the stranger had taken it with him. The latter possibility assumed he’d already permanently departed the premises, but that was still far from an established fact.

  Jorge listened intently for several minutes, straining to detect even the slightest sound of human activity inside the cabin, but there was nothing. The floorboards and stairs here creaked a lot. If anyone was up and moving around, there would be some noise. It didn’t take much longer for Jorge to determine he was the only person still alive in the cabin.

  Once he’d come to this conclusion, he decided the time had come to put everything he had into freeing himself from the chair. It wouldn’t be easy. In fact, it might wind up being the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Doing it would mean an instant and prolonged intensification of the pain. There would be moments of agony so severe it would feel unbearable. Nevertheless, he had to do it, had to find the inner strength to break the Mendez curse.

  The worst part would be pulling his feet free of the nails. The girl’s mother had done it, and if she could do it, so could he. A big part of how she’d accomplished it was, of course, down to maternal instinct, a relentless drive to do whatever it took to protect her surviving children. He didn’t have anything like that as an extra motivating factor. His desire to keep on living would have to be enough. Plus he still wanted to see his dog again. Rex. He was such a good boy.

  Just start doing it, he told himself. The longer you wait, the worse it’ll be.

  After allowing himself one last moment to get ready for the pain, he flexed the toes of his right foot—a movement that by itself triggered a stinging lash of agony—and began trying to lift the foot off the floor. He encountered resistance in the form of the head of the nail seconds after his foot began to slide up the thick length of steel. The pain was even worse than he imagined. He screamed. He wept. He begged for help that wouldn’t be coming. He cried out for his momma. He cried out for Rex. And then he tried lifting his foot again.

  The head of the nail began to sink beneath the flesh at the top of his foot, but only by about a millimeter or two. At that point, he could raise it no higher no matter how hard he tried, a realization that caused him to scream in frustration and despair. The problem was simple. As their first captive—and only planned captive at that point—the couple had taken a greater level of care in securing him to the chair. They took their time with it and used far more duct tape than they later used with the girl’s mother. His legs were too effectively immobilized to raise his foot beyond the current level.

  There was nothing he could do.

  He was going to die in this fucking chair.

  Just as he was beginning to feel resigned to this sad fate, another possibility occurred to him. His heart started beating faster again as he weighed the viability of what he had in mind. It might work. It might not. Probably not, but that didn’t matter. It was his final option, of that he had no doubt.

  After again steeling himself for an explosion of pain, he rocked himself forward slightly, causing the chair’s back legs to raise off the floor by an inch or two. His hope was this would provide the necessary extra leverage to accomplish what he had in mind.

  Only one way to find out.

  He abruptly threw the chair backward with as much force as he could muster, causing the nail heads to tear through the tops of his feet, further splintering bones while shredding tendons and cartilage.

  Unfortunately, he was not able to tear his feet all the way free of the nails on this attempt. He screamed as the chair tipped forward again and the bottoms of his feet again touched the floor. Instead of dispiriting him further, however, this failed attempt only added fuel to his rage and strengthened his determination. Screaming again, he rocked the chair forward slightly in the same manner as before, then immediately threw it backward again.

  This time it worked.

  His feet ripped free of the nails and the chair fell over backward. He screamed again, this time in triumph as the weak chair leg he’d detected earlier splintered and snapped. Now he had a greatly expanded range of motion with his left leg. The good news didn’t stop there. The chair’s back had also broken in the fall. He still had work to do, but he could almost taste his freedom and he wasn’t about to let anything stop him from reaching out and grabbing it.

  He started thrashing against the broken remnants of the chair. His hands being bound behind his back remained a serious problem at first, but not long after he began shedding broken pieces of the chair, he was able to get to his feet and stand in a hunched-over way. It was awkward as hell and he couldn’t move about very well, but it still had to count as a major breakthrough. He was vibrating with exhilaration over what he’d managed to do so far, but he also knew he wouldn’t be getting very far unless he could get free of the duct tape.

  Moving in a vaguely turtle-like manner, he was able to make his way over to the table, the surface of which was crowded with other intended instruments of torture the couple had never gotten around to using on him. A number of them would’ve been useful if he’d even had the use of his fingers, but he did not. His hands remained thoroughly encased in many layers of duct tape. He had tears in his eyes as he eyed the handsaw with particular longing.

  Jorge spent the next several minutes trying to brainstorm possible solutions to his dilemma. He wound up screeching in frustration, utterly unable to conceive of a way he might use any of the numerous edged tools to cut himself loose from the duct tape without the full use of his hands.

  Only then did he become fully aware of the unusual level of heat emanating from the kitchen. It was a thing he’d previously been dimly cognizant of because he was preoccupied with other things, but now it soared to the forefront of his consciousness. Frowning, he began waddling his way over to the kitchen nook. He was maybe a dozen feet away when he first glimpsed the orange glow of the stovetop burners. The obvious explanation occurred to him immediately—the mountain man had never turned the stove off after cauterizing Lindsey’s stumps.

  Soon Jorge was standing in front of the stove, staring at the glowing burners at about eye level. It was the best he could
do while still strapped to the remnants of the chair. The heat coming off the burners was intense and the air above the stove looked hazy, which was troubling. His excitement level was high again, because now, at last, a new plan came to him, one he believed might work. It was a plan with a high level of inherent injury risk, but at this point the potential for further injury meant nothing to him. No matter what, he wasn’t getting anywhere without enduring a little more pain.

  He turned about and put his back to the stove, grimacing and grunting as he struggled to lift his tape-covered hands high enough to move backward and hold them above one of the burners. The best he could do was get the encased hands flat on the surface of the stove. The muscles in his arms and shoulders strained mightily as he tried his hardest to lift his hands just one inch higher. When he accepted that he wouldn’t be able to do it, he did the only thing he could—he slid his hands backward until the layers of tape covering his knuckles touched the closest burner.

  The tape began to crackle and melt almost immediately. The burning tape gave off an awful, toxic-smelling odor as fumes began to fill the kitchen nook. Jorge flexed his wrists and strained to pull them apart as the tape continued to melt. It took many more seconds of constant contact with the burner, but the tape finally melted enough that he was able to pull his hands apart. The melted tape burned his flesh as he worked furiously to strip it free of his hands.

  He staggered forward, away from the stove, with much of the gooey, melted tape dripping from his fingertips, sizzling as the gray-ish lumps hit the floor. After flinging these bits of tape away, he went to work hurriedly removing the remaining pieces of the chair still attached to him. In another couple of minutes, he was completely free of the chair and his remaining bonds.