by Billy Wells
“Did you say Harold Carmichael was also a patient?”
“Yes, I worked with Harold for an extended period on a problem that plagued him for most of his life.”
“Wow! That’s so strange. I went drinking with Harold every Friday night for years, and he never mentioned it. None of us ever suspected he had a phobia until New Year’s Eve, and even then, he didn’t say what it was.”
“As I said, I’m not at liberty to discuss his personal affairs. Do you want to tell me about your nightmares?”
“Of course. I’m sorry I got sidetracked, but my nightmares are all about the death of my three friends. They keep speaking to me every night in my dreams.”
“What do they say?”
“They say they were murdered.”
“Murdered? The paper said three eyewitnesses saw Harold drive his car off a cliff. Frank made a fatal mistake on his first attempt at skydiving, and Murray slit his wrists and his throat by his own hand. The authorities concluded all three death’s were suicides, and there was no evidence anyone else was involved.”
“That’s what they concluded, but my friends say they were murdered. Every night they come to me pleading for revenge. I haven’t had a wink of sleep for weeks. I can’t bear it any longer. Can you offer a solution?”
“I find that the most effective cure for sleep deprivation is through hypnotism. Have you ever been hypnotized?”
“Never.”
“We can try it and see if it helps.”
“Before we start, can I ask what the stack of silver coins on your desk are for?”
“I use them when I hypnotize a patient. In fact, you are about to see one of them now.”
Winthrop opened a desk drawer, took out a black box, and placed it on the desktop. Reaching back behind his chair, he flipped a switch, and an intense laser beam crossed the plane of the mahogany surface.
“I place the coins in this box, and each time I push this red button on top, it releases a spinning silver coin into the laser beam. In seconds, by having the patient focus on the coin, I can hypnotize him with a few well-chosen words. Let me give you a demonstration.”
Winthrop pushed the red button, and a coin spun onto the table into the laser beam. Ben turned away and didn’t look at the coin.
Looking at Winthrop and avoiding the light, he said, “I’ve seen a coin like this before.”
Really? One of my clients stole one a few weeks ago. I have one empty space in the container. Where did you see it?”
“I found it on the ground next to Murray’s car at the Schram house.”
“I never thought of Murray as a thief.”
“I can guarantee Murray didn’t take your coin,” Ben said firmly.”
“If he didn’t take it, how did it get there?”
“I suspect you dropped it the night you murdered Murray and made it look like a suicide. He told me you tried to hypnotize him several times, but he was one of those rare people, it wouldn’t work on.”
Winthrop’s stern expression morphed into a cruel smile as he reclined further back in his chair and said gleefully, “Murray’s fear was too great to put one foot in any haunted house, much less the Schram House. On the night in question, I gave him a mild sedative, which allowed me to finally put him under. After that, he obeyed my every command.”
“You also made Frank make the mistake with his chute…and you made Harold drive off the cliff.”
Frank didn’t know he was in a plane when he stepped out of it at 5,000 feet, and Harold thought he was playing a video came when he drove off the cliff. I confess,” Winthrop exclaimed, brimming with accomplishment, “I killed them all.”
He turned and looked at Ben with a sheepish grin. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Remember you? From where?”
“From our college days.” Winthrop explained, “We lived together in the same fraternity back then. Do you recall the name Charlie Bolton?”
“Charlie Bolton. Yes, I remember Charlie well. He was the pledge we buried alive on Hell night. I’ll never forget his face when we finally found the gravesite where we buried him and opened the casket. But, you don’t look like Charlie at all.”
“Plastic surgery can do a lot,” Winthrop said, moving closer to Ben so he could see him better. “I don’t even recognize myself when I look in the mirror. In addition, I combed my hair like Elvis back then, and I didn’t have a mustache. I also wore horn rimmed glasses instead of contacts.”
“So this is what it’s all about. Revenge for a college prank that went wrong.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be buried alive for fifteen hours?”
“I knew when we rescued you, you’d lost it. But we were all drunk when we buried you, and none of us could remember which cemetery it was let alone which grave we put you in. There were thousands of cemetery plots covered by leaves from a windstorm the same night. Thank God, we had 500 volunteers searching. It was nobody’s fault; we didn’t mean to do it.”
“Do you know how long I was in the asylum?”
“I’m sorry. I never really heard. After they took you away, we never knew what happened to you. We tried to find out, but the Dean and his staff wouldn’t talk to us. They wanted to keep it under wraps because of the bad publicity.”
“For five hellish years, I had deranged perverts holding me down while they took turns brutalizing me.”
Ben did see a likeness in Winthrop’s psychotic facial features that reminded him of Charlie Bolton when they opened the coffin as he recoiled away from the deranged maniac.
Winthrop shrieked, “There were eight of you who took part in driving me mad, and you are the last. After tonight, the New Year’s resolution I made fifteen years ago will be fulfilled.”
“You crazy fuck! You’re nuts, and you’re going to pay for killing my friends and the others.” Ben heard the words he had just said, but it sounded like he was in a wind tunnel when he said them. His mind was suddenly very cloudy.
“No, Ben, like I said, it’s your time to die. You should be feeling a bit drowsy from the latte by now. I told my receptionist she could leave early so I could have you all to myself.”
“The latte?” Ben muttered in a hazy stupor. He felt very tired. So tired, he could barely keep his eyes open.
Winthrop pushed the red button, and another coin sped into the light and began to pulsate in his vision. Ben tried to resist it, but his eyes were drawn to it until he could focus on nothing else. Then, with the last vestige of his strength, he pushed the button on the transmitter in his pocket and cried out, “It’s time for the cavalry.”
Winthrop ignored the remark and continued to speak in a whisper, “The only thing you can hear is the sound of my voice and no one else. Do you understand?”
“Yes…only your voice,” Ben answered.
Suddenly the outer door burst open, and three men pushing sixty years old bounded into the room, grabbed Winthrop, and wrestled him to the carpet. One of the men started wrapping duct tape around his wrists and ankles while another stuffed some rags in his mouth and placed another band around his head to cover his mouth.
The other man helped Ben to his feet and placed smelling salts under his nose to revive him. Finally, he drifted back into consciousness, and pointing to Winthrop, said, “This is the monster that murdered your sons and my dearest friends.”
Winthrop’s face contorted with fear when he saw the unbridled hatred in the eyes of his captors. He wriggled on the floor trying desperately to free himself until one of the men kicked him in the head, and he lapsed into unconsciousness.
When Winthrop opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness, he knew exactly where the men had left him. He threw out his hands and battered his knuckles against the unmovable surface only inches above him.
He started screaming, but the noise inside the crude pine box was so maddening he couldn’t bear it. He started to sob, knowing unlike the last time, no one would be coming to rescue him this time.
RED HATS MASQUERADE BALL
Hilda overheard a woman tell another in the swimming pool that the Red Hats were having a masquerade ball for October 31. To attend, the organizers had asked each member to wear a costume with red and purple colors and a mask. They also asked members to bring a gag gift costing no more than ten dollars to exchange at midnight when all the revelers would unmask.
Hilda waded closer to the two obese women and said, testing the waters, “I happened to overhear you talking about the upcoming Red Hats Ball at Lake Osceola Recreation Center. I was in the Red Hats Club in New Jersey for more than ten years before I moved to Florida. Is the party is open to all Red Hats nationally or only local women?”
“I'm sure you're welcome to come if you like. I'll give you the address to send your check for the dinner, which will be twenty dollars per person.”
“How many people usually attend this type of function?” Hilda asked innocently.
“Oh, I'd say about a hundred women will sign up for Halloween. That's what we had last year.”
After sunbathing and reading for an hour, Hilda gathered her belongings. On her way out, she stopped to get the address to buy the ticket from the woman. She would arrange to pay cash under a false identity.
Hilda could barely control her excitement when she reached her golf cart. She had recently relocated to Florida after living with her late husband in an over 55 adult community in New Jersey for twenty years. She had lied about being a Red Hat. She loathed these types of activities and avoided them like anchovies on a pizza.
She’d already joined a bowling league and several bridge groups, but so far, as a single woman, no one had invited her to any functions in the neighborhood. In time, she would join some social clubs and get on some mailing lists. She needed more people she could wreak havoc on. The Red Hats Masquerade Ball was the perfect occasion to attend a party anonymously since she’d be wearing a full-face Halloween mask. She would make a brief appearance, plant the gift on the assigned table, and disappear into the night without anyone remembering she was there.
She would begin immediately in concocting a booby trap that would likely disfigure upwards of one hundred women. And, it was only three weeks way. This stroke of luck would allow her to enjoy her favorite pastime far sooner than she had anticipated. She felt an orgasmic tremor in her loins just thinking about it.
On the way home in her golf cart, she stopped at the community mailbox to mail three small boxes to random addresses in the neighborhood. It was amazing what you could order from medical laboratories under the guise of a research facility. Hilda had first learned of this godsend while reading a novel by Robin Cook. As soon as she read the passage, she rented a P.O. box her hubby never knew about to receive the various hermetically sealed packets of diseases she ordered from the Internet.
Now, ten years later, she was still using the U.S. Snail to send bugs to people far enough away to avoid any threat to herself. She rarely targeted anyone specific; all of the people she infected were randomly chosen. Only once had she read of someone’s death that she was sure she had caused. In her small way, her frequent mailings supported the failing postal service, which was a good thing. Unlike her, most people rarely mailed anything anymore. The boxes she placed in the mailbox on this occasion contained a particularly nasty strain of smallpox.
She had worked in a medical research facility as a young woman and knew how to handle contagious specimens. She had also spent a considerable amount of money converting a secret rental unit near the interstate into a laboratory complete with a decontamination area with insulated suits.
Next, she planned to mail happy-faced miniature dolls laced with nasty nodules of bacteria. These nasty little gifts probably not kill the people who opened them unless they had medical issues already. Nevertheless, they would definitely make them sick. Another insidious plus was the recipient’s home would need a complete cleansing just as it would with asbestos or mold contamination, which would be quite costly. If a random victim’s grandchild happened to be visiting when they opened the box, this could lead to devastating health consequences for their entire lives. ”Life's a bitch,” she thought, “and then, you die.”
Hilda had plenty of time to make the surprise package for the masquerade ball, but she couldn't wait to get started. She had agonized over this creation for years. Now that Fred, her husband, had passed and her son had a family and a life of his own back in Jersey, it was time to let her creative juices flow.
She had found a blueprint for the diabolical device in a novel written by a soldier who disarmed booby-traps in the dark to enable his own forces to penetrate German bunkers during World War II.
Hilda loved surfing the Internet for new ideas to make other people's lives a living hell. After a satisfying salad for lunch, she went to Home Depot to purchase most of the items she would need for the device. The explosive components were the most difficult to acquire without being traced, but after greasing several palms the week before and almost being raped by a scar-faced pervert in a shabby section of Orlando, she secured the necessary materials.
Now that she was alone with no one to distract her, she could supplement her daily routine of pickle ball and golf with building booby traps in addition to her mailings.
Two weeks before the party, an old geezer cut her off in his golf car and almost caused a serious accident. The unpleasant encounter infuriated her, and after smiling as if nothing had happened, Hilda followed the reprobate home. The next day, she left a present for him in his mailbox. The snippet about the explosion in the Daily Chronicle the next morning was an unexpected delight. Apparently, the old fart had lost an eye and several fingers from the blast.
As the date of the Red Hat party grew closer, Hilda felt as giddy as a young girl getting ready for her first date as she imagined what would happen when the unsuspecting victim opened her surprise.
The only possible glitch in executing her plan was the weight of the package. Hilda worried that someone might be suspicious at how heavy this gift costing no more than ten dollars was compared to the others. She hoped when they lifted the small square package from the table, they might think it was a paperweight. Paperweights were heavy, but normally inexpensive.
It was unfortunate that the nails required to inflict the most damage had to be somewhat heavy. There were lighter alternatives, but according to the specifications of the device, a certain mass was necessary for each projectile to puncture the skin and lodge deeply enough into the eye to inflict the maximum, irrevocable damage. The instructions were very specific on this point, and so, Hilda followed each detail to the letter.
On the morning of the long-awaited Red Hat event, Hilda received an email from Bradley, her son, informing her the family would stop for a visit on November 4. This was next Wednesday, four days after the party.
Since the rental unit housed all of the suspicious equipment and supplies she used for her booby traps and communicable diseases, Hilda had little to do to her villa to prepare for Bradley’s visit. The storage building she rented was perfect, and she never received any mail concerning it since she paid cash in advance.
Hilda was disappointed the family reunion was so close to the party, but she couldn't wait to see her precious granddaughter, Penny. Seeing Madeleine, Bradley's wife, was a different story, but the women her son had dated before he married her were ten times more annoying. Madeline was a wonderful mother and homemaker, and she made more money than Bradley. She also had very ample breasts for him to play with. Her son had always gravitated to women with large breasts.
Hilda adored little Penny who looked a lot like her when she was a little girl. In fact, Hilda had pictures her father took with his Brownie camera that looked identical to Penny’s pictures when the little angel was six years old. She knew she’d better enjoy her granddaughter now while she was little, because when she became a teenager, she’d never want to come to visit her old granny.
That afternoon, Hilda went to the shoppin
g center and bought a very expensive Barbie doll, a cute little pink dress, and some wrapping paper and ribbons. She couldn’t wait to see Penny’s face light up when she saw the beautiful, but pricey doll.
When she returned home, she placed the two presents for Penny on the dining room table in a beautiful shopping bag adorned with images of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She used the pink and purple paper she bought at Macy’s and a great big red bow to wrap the surprise package for the Red Hat Masquerade Ball. Hilda was sure her package would be one of the first ones selected; it was stunning and beautifully wrapped.
She was still worried about the weight, but there was nothing she could do about it. Going to the mall had taken more time than she thought, and she knew it would take about an hour to dress for the masquerade ball. Once it was on, no one would ever be able to identify her afterward. She was a master of disguise. It was critical that she not talk with any of the members in her normal voice.
Since Hilda had already checked the parking lot and the security cameras, she knew just where to park and where to walk to avoid being filmed as much as possible.
She wished she could record a video of the explosion, but she would be long gone by midnight.
The package about the size of a small box of Tide would detonate as soon as the top was removed like a jack in the box. It would send out hundreds of small nails and shards of glass that would pepper everyone around it.
She remembered the subdued carpet at Lake Oceola that would soon be soaked with blood. She imagined most of the members would lose one and possibly both eyes. This was without a doubt the most diabolical bloodletting she had ever conceived. It would certainly produce headlines on a national level, and possibly around the world.
She couldn’t believe no one else had tried this before. After all, anyone with a subscription to Popular Mechanics could have constructed the device by following simple directions.
She thought of all the wasted years when her obsession to inflict pain was put on hold while raising a family. The twenty-year inactivity had been maddening, but faced with the same alternatives again; she knew she would do everything the same. Bradley, her loving son, and Penny, her precious granddaughter, were more than worth any sacrifice she had made.