And then I felt it.
It was strange having to rely on another creature’s senses so I wasn’t sure I was actually feeling what I was feeling. But through little Larry I swore I could feel at least seven swirling black chasms coming from the killer’s back yard. And these were human. Something about these metal walls prevented me from sensing them myself. I tried to probe the bodies as much as I could through Larry, but I could barely pick up their essence as it was. If there were really corpses back there I’d just need to get through the doorway to access them.
It struck me as funny that I could be so analytical about using dead bodies as weapons. The thought would have never occurred to me before until people actually started trying to kill me. Ironic. If my grandpa hadn’t gone after me, I never would have discovered everything I had learned about my gift.
I kept Larry stationed at the grate to be my eyes on the killer’s movement. I disconnected from him temporarily so I could clear my head and focus on how I was going to convince my kidnapper to let me into that room. Or at least into the doorway.
Four straps pinned me on the metal table: around the chest, abdomen/wrists, knees and ankles. Wiggle room in the head, elbows and stomach. Question was: how heavy was this table? I just needed to tip it over. It would hurt like no one’s business, but it might loosen me up enough to scooch to the doorway.
It was a gamble I was willing to take. At this point my options were try something or die.
Like a swing I used my body to lean back and forth. The grating sound of metal was loud and I knew my captor would come through the door any minute to check on me.
I connected to Larry’s eyes. Bad guy was still eating his Wheaties.
I swung harder and faster.
KA-KLUMP! KA-KLUMP!
So loud! Why couldn’t metal be quieter?
My kidnapper heard that last one. He stood up with an expression of pure hatred and anger etched on his face.
Not much time.
KA-KLUMP!
BAM!
The table fell on its side and it jolted the chest strap loose.
Oh man!
The door opened.
I freed my hands.
Like an enraged animal, the killer swooped down and grabbed my arms to re-secure them. He was so much stronger!
I just needed to get to the doorway.
It was open! So close!
I smashed my head against his in the most painful head butt imaginable. I couldn’t tell if it hurt me more than him, but it did manage to make him loosen his grip. I punched his face as hard as I could, he reeled back from the shock of it.
I quickly untied the rest of my bonds and tried to make a crawl for the door.
But this guy was pumped full of adrenaline and he tackled me from behind.
I searched for the seven black holes of hope.
Not close enough.
I kicked wildly and managed to connect with his groin area.
He gurgled in anguish, but his grasp was still tight.
I inched closer.
No black holes.
Come on. Just a few more inches.
He started pulling me back into the room. How was he so strong?
My pure animal instincts kicked in and I whirled around and shoved the base of my hand straight into his face. The effect was enough. He reeled back from the instant explosion of blood coming from his nose and his eyes looked at me in shocked anger.
I had simply angered the beast.
I hoped Larry was right, I was betting all of it on the faith that there were seven corpses out there that were raring for a fight.
I leaped through the entryway and shut the door on him before he could pummel his way through. I knew I only had seconds before he simply swiped his hand over the sensor and was coming after me. He wouldn’t hesitate this time. I was a dead woman if I didn’t act fast.
Taking a deep breath I searched for my seven girls and found them instantaneously.
The door burst open.
I grabbed a chair from his dining table and smashed his chest with it as soon as he was visible. He fell back into the room and I slammed the door shut on him again. I knew this wasn’t a permanent solution. He’d just open the door again, but maybe this time he’d be more cautious, all I needed was a little time.
The girls were in varying degrees of decomposition. I know, gross, but as I learned from the virtual bar and Jason, the fresher the better. I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed myself into their swirling black chasms. They were buried, but shallowly. I made them dig as fast as they could. One only had one arm, ewwww. It made me realize what this monster had done to innocent girls and I was filled with such a rage that I wanted to make him suffer like he made these girls suffer before he ended their lives.
And that was my plan.
He was about to have a reunion he’d never forget.
The door creaked open.
I stood aside, second chair in my hands, ready to smash his face in a second time.
The girls were through the dirt and on their way to the house.
I was about to slam the door shut again when the metal table was shoved through the entryway keeping the door open.
I saw him then, his eyes wide with excitement and glee, blood on his nose, lips and chin from where I hit him. He looked like something out of a nightmare. This man was the physical incarnation of a monster.
And he was coming for me.
The back door was locked. I made the girls shove hard against it to break it down.
This made his head turn from surprise, then he smiled wickedly at me. “Police won’t help you, girl. Your grandfather keeps me quite safe.”
I held the chair in front of me as a barrier between us. “Not the cops, a-hole.”
His only response was a raised eyebrow, but his eyes were still filled with the thrill of the chase. “More bugs?” I could tell he welcomed that idea. He had adapted from the first time I sent the cockroaches after him. He wanted to live the experience again and defeat it. Like he fed on his own fear.
“Something like that.”
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Almost through.
“Big bug.” He leapt toward me.
I swung the chair at him, but he caught the leg with his hand.
He managed to yank the chair out of my hands and throw it across the room.
We circled each other. He was simply salivating with delight, ready to pounce. I felt like I was a gazelle cornered by a lion.
BAM! SNAP!
The door flew open.
And in poured the most grotesque vision I’d ever seen in my life.
The seven girls were naked and mangled beyond comprehension.
He had stripped off what made these girls human. One had her lips ripped off and her teeth and jaw were visible beneath. One had no nose. One had her hands removed. One was missing her arm. One had her skin removed like she had been boiled and peeled. One had no eyes. And the last girl was missing her entire face, just sinew and bone left.
I wanted to scream but I also wanted to cry. These girls had been tortured and murdered in the most horrendous way imaginable. There was no way of telling if he took these parts from their bodies while they were still alive or not. I couldn’t imagine the kind of pain and torment they must have gone through before they were finally killed. I stared at the girl whose eyes were ripped out. It would have been me if I didn’t have my gift.
The killer had stopped dead in his tracks as he watched the seven girls walk through his back door.
“No,” he said it so quietly I could barely hear him.
“Yes,” I said with so much emotion I almost choked it out.
Time to make them talk.
I controlled the eye-less girl first. She walked up to him so they were within inches of each other. He was still paralyzed by the sight of his victims. “What can we collect from you?” I made her say. Her vocal chords were deteriorated from rot so her voice was gravelly and low.
�
�Impossible.” The killer dropped to the floor and held his knees to his chest. All his momentum and fire gone.
I knew it wouldn’t last long. I needed to get him tied up.
I made the girl with no face kneel down to his level. “I want my face back,” she said in the same rough voice as the other girl.
I had the girl with no mouth run into the metal room and grab the fallen straps from the table. Once in hand, I made her come back and place the killer onto one of his dining chairs, tying him in place. He still didn’t struggle. His eyes kept moving from one girl to the next as if daring himself to wake up from a terrible dream.
His head was down and he was shaking it back and forth mumbling, “Impossible. Impossible.”
I made all seven girls surround him in a tight circle just in case he came to his senses and managed to break free.
“You keep saying that, but here we are and I want my arm back.” I made the armless girl speak.
“I just wanted something to remember you by. It was your wickedness that made me take those things from you. I made you all pure.” He sounded like a child trying to explain why he broke his toys.
“Do we look pure now?” I made the skinless girl speak and bend down so close to his face that he actually flinched. Without lips, her words were garbled and lisped.
He started rocking the chair violently, screaming in anguish. I started to realize that this may be too much for his warped mind. He sounded like a rabid dog, barking and yelling, snapping his jaw together and biting the air.
It was so much more frightening than when he was calm. I had provoked the monster within and it was coming out. Suddenly, the seven girls were exactly what they appeared to be, empty shells, nothing more and I felt more exposed and petrified than I did when I was strapped to that table.
His eyes met mine.
“YOU DID THIS!!!!” he howled in excruciating fury.
I backed away unconsciously. I was up against a whole other species of human being here and I was way out of my league. Being clever and wanting to exact revenge on this psycho may have cost me my life.
“MEAT PUPPETS! JUST LIKE THE BUGS!”
The way he said meat puppets made me instinctively gag. What had I been thinking? I should have just ran and left these girls to stall so I could escape. My own sense of self-righteousness had kept me there so I could see this man suffer. Selfish! Egomaniac! Stupid! All these words applied to how I felt about myself in that moment.
I needed to get to a phone. If I couldn’t call the police I’d call the gang. Jason could by-pass the police. He was a reporter. He told me that the more public I made things the easier it was to stay alive. Advice I should have remembered earlier.
The killer broke out of the bonds that held him by smashing the wooden chair to the floor. Along with the snapping of wood a very distinct crack came from his body. He had broken something.
Good.
Maybe enough to distract him while I escaped.
I was so shocked by his sudden transformation from crying mess to raging bull I had let the girls go lapse.
Tongue hanging loose and eyes bugging out, the killer came charging at me with a guttural roar.
I acted fast and made all seven girls tackle him to the ground. He struggled as if his limbs were made of chainsaws, tearing and ripping into the corpses. If he broke something his adrenaline and rage prevented him from slowing down on any level.
And then I ran.
Straight out to the backyard.
It was closed off with a six-foot oak fence. I could see over a hundred feet ahead of me the loose dirt where I had made the girls dig their way out to my rescue. I could feel the killer rip through their flesh to get to me. He was pinned down for the moment, but I knew it wouldn’t last long.
I ran to the side of the fence and climbed over the top, landing on the neighbor’s yard next door. No fences here, so I kept on running, running up the grass street as fast as my legs would carry me. I was instantly tired, days of being locked up and starved were taking its toll, only adrenaline was keeping me moving. Even though I could barely breathe, I kept moving, moving, moving.
I was at least a block away, but I didn’t want to stop. If I stopped he’d be there like a bad cartoon. All my fears from being locked up in that monster’s house were bubbling to the surface in ways I couldn’t control. Tears were flowing freely down my face. I could barely move forward as the tears turned to sobs, but I didn’t stop. I had to keep going. I wanted to vomit. I choked and bawled and gasped for breath. My run had turned to a sluggish zombie walk. And then I did throw-up all over my clothes, but I kept walking. Nothing could stop me. The farther I moved, the closer I was to freedom. And I still didn’t feel free.
I had dropped the connection to the girls without even realizing it. I was so focused on getting out of there I hadn’t kept my concentration up. He was probably contacting help to get me back. Turner would appease him instantly. He wouldn’t want it to get out that a serial killer still existed in our “perfect utopia” of immortality.
The neighborhood I was in was barely above a trailer park in terms of social status, which meant they were poor, but not the lowest rung of poor like I was. I was scared to knock on anyone’s door for fear of them working for my grandpa. I just wished there was a payphone I could use, but then again, Turner probably had those tapped in case I escaped. I made a split second decision and turned to the first “normal” looking house I could find. White picket fence, yellow paint, wrap-around porch with a swing set. Please let someone be home.
I was on the verge of collapse as I reached the front door. I tried not to think about the fact that I was covered in vomit, blood and dirt. I must have smelled pretty ripe. I knocked on the door and waited.
A few moments later a plump woman who looked like she was in her early thirties opened the door. One look at me and she gasped in horror.
“Please, help,” I said through my tears.
“Oh my! What on earth happened to you?! Come in! Come in!” She shooed me inside. “Are you hurt? Of course you’re hurt, sit down.” She ushered me to her couch and sat down next to me examining each and every wound. Which really wasn’t that many considering I managed to get out of there before he could start cutting me up. She had a round and friendly face with a splattering of freckles across her nose. Her hair was dark and pulled back in a messy bun and she was wearing a worn-in running suit with white socks. She looked like she’d always be in a state of “frazzle” no matter what the circumstances. At this point just seeing a friendly face made me want to collapse from relief.
“I just need to use your phone. I was kidnapped and I escaped, but I think he’s looking for me.” I wanted to warn her. The last thing I wanted to do was get her killed.
“It’s that Brady man, isn’t it? I knew it! Here let me get you a phone.” The woman quickly snagged a cell phone from the next room and handed it to me. “I’ve reported him before, but they never do anything. I knew he was up to no good. That man is at least a hundred years old and he looks twenty. What is a richy up to living on our block in that hovel of his? Nothing good, that’s what. What did he do to you? You call the police, maybe they’ll listen to you,” she rambled on and I suddenly understood that if she had her suspicions of the man that took me and called the police…
…Turner would have her phone tapped, or at least re-directed to his people whenever she contacted the police.
She continued her rant, “I’ve seen him take girls in, but they never come out. One night I had my binoculars and saw him digging in his backyard! The police told me his pet dog died and he was burying him, but unless his dog was a Great Dane, that was a body, I’m sure of it!” She re-focused her attention back on me. “Listen to me ramble on. My name is Doris.”
“Chelsan,” I said quietly. “Do other people in the neighborhood pay attention to this guy?” I wanted to get a feel for the size of Turner’s web on this block.
“They do, but they keep quiet, ever s
ince Franny Lerner walked straight up to his house demanding she see inside. The police came and arrested her and when she came back she was… different.” Doris looked like she didn’t quite know how to explain herself.
“Different how?” I asked. Though I thought I knew the answer.
“I don’t know. Just funny… off. Like she wasn’t herself. She said that Brady let her see his house and that everything was fine. He was just a shy, quiet guy. Everyone was a little freaked out by her strangeness and some people said she was replaced by a robot. If you believe such nonsense. Anyway, it scared all of us silly, so after that no one said anything about Brady. Utopic denial is what I call it. They’d rather believe everything is just fine that actually have to admit that horrible things still happen in this world. Everyone on the block thinks I’m crazy to keep calling the police like I do, but we all know something is wrong with that man, and I can’t just sit by and let him do whatever it is he does in there.” She looked at me curiously, “What did he do? Did you see any other girls in there with you?”
The Riser Saga Page 21