Shackled

by Ray Garton

  Calisto's black and silver robe was open in front and he was naked underneath. He took the cordless phone from the marble-topped table at the end of the love seat and punched in two numbers, waited a moment with the phone to his ear, then punched in four more.

  Dr. Corbus answered on the first ring.

  "Ah, R.C.," the doctor said before Calisto has spoken. "I hope you are pleased."

  "Very. Very pleased, yes. In fact, I just had her. She's asleep right now. But not for long, if you know what I mean. You've done wonderful work with this girl. But not only that. She's ... there's something about her, I don't know, she's just ... fantastic. Absolutely gorgeous and fanfuckingtastic."

  "Thank you very much. High praise from a man of your experience and specialized knowledge."

  "Cut the shit, Corbus. I want her. For good. I'll buy her. I'll pay whatever you're asking. Same as anyone else. I've got big plans for this bitch."

  "So. The usual breaking-in process won't be enough, eh?"

  "No, not this time. Not for me. I want her for the long haul. For me. She's incredible, Corbus. She'll be worth every penny. In fact, she'll make it back double. Triple. After I'm done with her, she's going to be one hell of a knockout. A star. Whatever issue she's in will sell like crack in South Central. And I won't hear of any discounts, Corbus. You've done plenty of favors for me. This is strictly business."

  "But what difference does it make, R.C? What's yours is ours and what's ours is yours. We are, after all, in this together, yes? And we are indebted to you."

  "Yes," Calisto said with a sigh. "But I don't want to be indebted to you. No offense, Corbus. I just don't like owing anybody anything."

  "No offense taken. That's an admirable trait. But let me make a suggestion." Corbus cleared his throat. "The girl was here in the complex for a rather short period of time. She seemed to make wonderful progress during that short time. Perhaps too wonderful. It's a bit too early to tell. Why don't we wait a little while, see how she does with you. If she works out, if her training has been sufficient and you still feel the same after a period of time, then we will discuss it. Does that sound satisfactory?"

  "Perfect. Just perfect. We'll talk soon."

  Calisto turned off the phone and replaced it on the small table without waiting for a response from Corbus. He left the lounge and went back into the bedroom with a large smile on his face, fondling the growing erection beneath his robe ...

  7

  "Ethan, it's Bent."

  "Bent, hello. I'm glad you called. I've got a lot to tell you."

  "Let's hear it."

  "Garner introduced me to a friend of his, a man who used to be a police officer."

  Ethan told Bent everything about Leon Bixby, everything the man had said, then: "Bent, I'm afraid this fellow convinced me that Chief Cotchell is ... one of them!

  "Them? One of who? The Satanists?"

  "That's right. The more I think about it, the more logical — "

  "No, no, wait. Wait a second."

  There was a long silence over the line. Ethan waited and waited.

  "Bent? Are you still there?"

  "Yeah, I'm just ... thinking. What you said ... it made something click in my head. Look, I don't think Cotchell is our man."

  "Why not? He had no interest in listening to your theory about the — "

  "I know, but think about it, Ethan, how many police chiefs do you think would listen to a tabloid reporter? Especially one with a crazy theory like mine? Huh? I mean, you didn't, even want to listen to me at first, right?"

  "Yes, that's right."

  "Cotchell had good reason to be suspicious. Tell you the truth, I think he was sincere, I think he really had your best interests in mind. He may be loud and unpleasant, but I don't think he's the one you're looking for. What were you planning on doing, anyway — having the chief of police arrested?"

  Ethan told him about Garner's plan.

  "My god, Garner's really jumped into this headfirst, hasn't he?"

  "It seems so. But if you don't think Cotchell is involved, then maybe I should tell Garner to scrap the whole idea."

  "No, no, it's a great plan. Cotchell's just the wrong guy. Let me tell you about a Sergeant Phil Douglas ...”

  8

  "Where did he get that green jumpsuit?"

  "I dunno. But he keeps it for this very reason. Same with the spiked boots and that pole-climbing belt, or whatever you call it. Who knows how often he uses them? When he's not doing work for me, I don't know what the hell he does. And I'm not sure I want to."

  "He's done this before?"

  "He seems to know exactly what he's doing, so I suspect he has. Probably for a lot of people. And that's not counting when he's just playing around in his spare time for fun."

  "And he's never been caught?"

  "Not that I know of."

  Ethan and Garner sat in Ethan's car in the dark of night, a block and a half away from Douglas's house and on the opposite side of the street. Their eyes were staring straight ahead where they could see Rob walking away from the car in the direction of Douglas's house, passing through the round pools of illumination cast by the streetlights.

  They had followed through with the plan, but Cotchell was no longer their target. Bent had told Ethan how strangely the sergeant had behaved, how closely he'd watched Bent, and how Bent had gotten the feeling that while Douglas was on the phone staring at Bent, he was talking about him, telling someone about him. Ethan's suspicions about Cotchell had turned a cog in Bent's head, and it made sense: maybe Douglas was reporting to someone, telling them that Bent was nosing around in places where his nose didn't belong. He'd given Ethan a detailed description of Douglas, and Ethan, Garner, and Rob had followed the man home from the police station.

  Although they were sitting in the car with the windows rolled up, whenever they spoke, Ethan and Garner whispered, as if someone might overhear them.

  "I don't know how he does it," Garner said with a smile. "Even if I could climb a telephone pole, I wouldn't. Heights make my bladder go funny."

  Ethan leaned forward and folded his arms across the top of the steering wheel, turning to Garner. "You sound awfully calm. Aren't you worried? Aren't you afraid that he'll get caught? That we’ll get caught?"

  "Like I said, Pastor, far as I know, he's never been caught before. Think about it. While you're sitting at home in the evening with your family, are you gonna pay any attention to a guy in a jumpsuit with tools hanging at his sides climbing a telephone pole? Of course not. You're too busy being on the lookout for some guy sneaking around your house, or someone else's. People aren't all that interested in protecting the telephone poles in their neighborhoods. They probably hardly ever notice them. No, I'm not worried. And I really don't think you should be, either." He turned to Ethan and smiled. "Have faith."

  After a moment Ethan laughed and placed his chin on his hands on the steering wheel. "Well, if we get caught, at least I'll have amusing company in jail."

  Ahead of them, Rob grew smaller and smaller as he walked away, and finally disappeared in the darkness between two streetlights.

  "Apparently, he's found the right pole," Garner said.

  "Is there something we should be doing?"

  "We're doing it. We're waiting ...”

  It did not take long. When Rob returned, he was walking at the same leisurely pace he'd been walking before, as if there were no reason in the world for him to hurry or be at all concerned that anyone might have seen him. He got in the backseat, and the second he closed the door, said, "Okay, let's take off."

  Ethan started the car immediately and drove away,

  "So, how'd it go?" Garner asked, turning around to lean an elbow on the back of the seat and smile at Rob.

  "He's nailed. Now all I have to do is set up the tape recorder, then wait to see who he calls and who calls him."

  Ethan smiled and glanced in the rearview mirror. "You're quite a boy, Rob."

  "Oh, thanks. Just, uh ... don't
tell my parents."

  9

  The moon was full the night it happened, and its shimmering light fell from the purple-black, jewel-studded sky to cast long shadows over the desert floor and give the air a murky look, as if it were filled with smoke.

  That was when Bent saw it.

  They had been at it for nearly three weeks. Bent had talked to Ethan almost every day; he was spending most of his time at Garner's, going home occasionally to see Loraina and Anice and keeping in touch with them constantly by phone. He told Bent what Rob had done and that they were waiting for something to show up on his phone line that would prove their suspicions correct. If nothing did, then they would try someone else at the station, and someone else, until they came up with what they were looking for.

  Bent told Ethan that he and Coll were doing a lot of waiting as well, but had seen nothing yet.

  He couldn't wait to tell Ethan what he was seeing now.

  The arduous task of waiting itself had been only a little more trying than the arguments they'd been having as time went on. Coll insisted that they give it up and go back, telling Bent that they were doing nothing more than wasting their time with the hallucinations of a crazy woman who not only had set up a shrine to Liberace, but who received messages from him as well. He insisted that they were wasting valuable time better spent on more productive pursuits that actually might turn up some information they could use.

  But there was something in Bent's gut that told him otherwise. First of all, there were the rocks they'd found in the desert.

  Coll had a friend in a Los Angeles forensics lab, and after calling in a favor, he'd sent the rocks to that friend via FedEx (an expensive package). Five days later, they got a call from Coll's friend, who said the substance on the rocks was old and had been in the sun quite a long time, but it was definitely human blood and hair. Coll's friend was very disturbed by that and wanted nothing more to do with the whole thing; he promised to hang on to the rocks for Coll, but asked that he not be involved any further.

  Those lab results gave Bent the sickening feeling there really was something to what Nattie had said, to what she had seen. Coll, however, said it was a coincidence ... incredible, yes, but a coincidence. After all, he said, it was a desert, remote and out of sight of passersby; god only knew how many bodies were buried out there, how many human bones had been left to bleach in the sun.

  Bent told Coll, more than once, that he was welcome to leave if he liked, but he never did. And whenever he said that, Coll quieted down and ceased to argue about it. But he remained adversarial toward the whole thing ...

  ... until that night, when Bent finally saw it through the spotter.

  To the naked eye, it was just a tiny spot of blurry, orange brightness in the distance at first. But it caught Bent's attention nevertheless, and he jumped toward the spotter, putting his eye to it for a moment. Then he said, very quietly, "Holy shit, this is it."

  Coll was sound asleep in the folding lawn chair, a gentle snore coming from his throat like a cat's purr. He did not stir at the sound of Bent's voice.

  Bent leaned over and slapped him on the knee, hard, then put his eye back to the spotter and watched.

  It was a fire but it was a long distance away, out there in the dark nothingness of the desert, and therefore looked tiny and weak.

  "Wake up, dammit!" Bent hissed. "They're doing it! They're out there right now! A fire and everything! And they're gathering around it!"

  When Coll staggered groggily up beside him, Bent pulled away so he could look. Bent looked over at Nattie. She'd fallen asleep in her chair, a couple feet from her spotter.

  Thank god, Bent thought, wondering how she would react if she were awake.

  "I'll be damned," Coll muttered. "The old girl was right."

  "Okay, let's go."

  "What?" Coll pulled his head away from the spotter and gawked at Bent.

  "I said, let's go. Get the flashlights. We'll keep them covered with our hands and only use them when we have to."

  "Are you out of your fucking mind?" Coll hissed. "What, you wanna go up to these guys and introduce ourselves, or something?"

  "What did you think we were gonna do, just watch them from here?"

  "Well, yeah, if you want to know the truth, that's exactly what I thought! In fact, I'd like that very much! It would make me very fucking happy to watch them from here!"

  "Then you stay here. I'm going. I want to get up close and see what they're doing. For all we know, it's some kind of college hazing or something." Bent grabbed a flashlight and stood straight.

  "You idiot! You're an idiot, you know that? Just an idiot!"

  He snatched up a flashlight hard as he stood, glaring at Bent in the dark.

  Bent smiled.

  "Let's go," he said.

  They headed into the faintly glowing darkness of the moonlit desert, their feet crunching softly over the ground as they moved toward that glowing, writhing spot of orange light in the distance.

  Animals hurried out of their way, darting into the bushes before them as they walked. Things slid and skittered over the ground.

  Coll whispered, "You know, we're liable to get killed by something before we even get there. Any idea what kind of reptiles and insects and — and — and things live out here in the desert?"

  "We're fine, we're fine," Bent whispered back.

  "Oh, no, no, no. I'm fine. You're mentally ill. You'll never be able to afford the amount of therapy you need!"

  They kept walking, drawing closer and closer to the crowd out there in the desert. Now and then, one of them would put a hand over his flashlight and turn it on, letting only slivers of light escape between his fingers to make sure he wasn't about to run into a rock, a tree, or a bush.

  When they were just close enough to make out the people gathered around the fire — people in dark robes, some hooded, some not — Bent and Coll moved close together and Bent whispered in a mere breath, "Let's move off to the right. See that big rock over there?" He pointed toward an enormous boulder the size of a small apartment. "We get up there, we can get a good look at them from above, watch them without them knowing, right?"

  Coll turned to him, and even in the pale moonlight, Bent could see the fear on his face. His eyes were wide as they stared at Bent.

  "You're crazy," Coll hissed. "I mean, I could understand it if we had cameras and we were gonna take pictures of them, or something. But we don't, and we can't. So what's the point of crawling up on that rock and watching them, for crying out loud?"

  "The point is, we're watching them for us. So we can see them. The pictures can come later."

  Bent headed immediately to the right, toward the grounded boulder. Shaking his bowed head, Coll followed.

  Things continued to crunch the dirt ahead of them, things they couldn't see, things that moved quickly in all directions, things they couldn't even begin to identify, and weren't too sure they wanted to.

  When they finally reached the rock, climbing up the side that was opposite the gathering was not as easy as Bent had thought it would be. Their feet slipped over its smoothly curved, creviced, and lumpy surface, making gritty little sounds that made both of them cringe — chitch-chitch ... clup, chitch, clup ... chitch-chitch —but they kept climbing anyway, slowly and carefully, trying hard to avoid making any noise.

  At the top, each of them released a long and quiet sigh. Once they'd collected themselves and tried to calm their frantic heartbeats — they stared at each other silently and Coll gave Bent a look that suggested he would be in big trouble when they got back — they looked over the edge of the rock, each holding his darkened flashlight in a white-knuckled fist.

  The people below — maybe thirty or forty of them — wore black robes with hoods. Some of them held flashlights and the beams cut through the desert's darkness like the blades of swords. They had made an altar out of rocks. It was rectangular, and on the top, it sank inward, as if it were an old, worn mattress. The fire burned around that roc
k altar, its flames just beginning, still small and unthreatening but eager to grow ... sharp, orange tongues licking at the sides of the stone altar. Beside the fire lay a Caucasian boy. He couldn't have been more than fifteen ... fifteen at most from what they could see by the light of the flames. He was naked and gagged, arms and legs free, and he moved ... but very slowly, sluggishly, as if he were half-asleep ... or perhaps drugged.

  Bent and Coll exchanged a horrified, silent glance, then returned their eyes to the gathering below.

  Two of the robed and hooded figures lifted the boy — one by the ankles, the other by the shoulders — and hefted him effortlessly onto the top of the altar, lying faceup, pale and naked, the sides of his body reflecting the slight orange color of the flames below him, all around him. But he didn't struggle. Bent and Coll could tell from the boy's limp arms and legs and the dazed, frightened look on his face that he couldn't struggle. He was helpless. Most definitely drugged.

  The flashlight beams were scattered all around. A few hundred yards away, they could make out the ghostly outlines of a few vans and a couple of Blazers. But one of the figures lifted his head and shouted something — they couldn't make out any of the words — and the beams began to come together, coalesce, and slowly blink out as they neared the fire.

  Whatever it was they were going to do, they were ready to do it.

  They gathered around the altar, all of them, flashlights put away, with only the light of the fire to guide them. They formed a circle around it as the boy's head turned back and forth, back and forth, very slowly, his face twisted into a look of fear, imploring fear.

  Voices muttered. People spoke to one another. Then there was silence.

  Four robed figures stepped forward, two from each side of the boy. Each of them held something. They moved almost simultaneously, almost as if they were mirror images of each other. One on each side got down on one knee, each holding a large goblet — no, no, it was more like a large chalice — between both hands and remained there, frozen ... waiting for something. The other two produced enormous, sinister-looking daggers, the blades reflecting the light of the low fire around the altar in a glitter of orange and gold. Each of them took hold of one of the boy's hands and straightened his arms, holding them outward over the chalices.