Shackled

by Ray Garton

  A sharp breath escaped through Bent's nostrils as he lowered his head for a moment, not sure he wanted to watch.

  The daggers were lifted, then lowered suddenly, their tips buried into the inside of the boy's elbows and pulled downward to the heel of his hands.

  When the blood began to flow, they let his arms hang limp from the edges of the altar ... directly over the chalices.

  The blood ran in torrents down the arms, falling into the chalices. The black figures remained there for a long time, waiting, holding their chalices beneath the arms until they were full of liquid darkness that was so dark it did not even reflect the bright moonlight. Then they stood.

  The four people — two with daggers, two with chalices of blood — backed away from the altar and returned to their places in the circle.

  Bent and Coll looked at each other, pale and sickened, horrified. Coll leaned forward and breathed into Bent's ear. "We're in over our heads. Let's get out of here now. Right away. While we can. I'm telling you ... this is just too much ... we shouldn't be here."

  Bent simply looked at Coll and shook his head with determination.

  He couldn't bear to leave now. They were too close. They'd already seen proof of what they suspected ... and there was always the chance that one of them would show himself, or herself, so they would at least have a description to go on, however vague, there in the firelit darkness.

  One of the figures at the head of the altar stepped forward. In a deep male voice, he began to speak loudly ... but they couldn't understand what he was saying. It was gibberish to them.

  As the figure spoke the gibberish, the others passed the two chalices around and each person took a sip of the boy's blood.

  Each chalice made a half circle around the altar. But there was one person who did not take a sip. The robed and hooded figure stood at the boy's head, hands joined in front, motionless.

  When each chalice had made its way around, it was placed on the ground.

  The gibbering figure fell silent, reached into the folds of the robe, and removed something. The figure began to squirt fluid all over the rocks and the boy.

  The fire suddenly grew, roaring upward, the flames climbing until they were not only licking at the rocks, but at the darkness above.

  The boy began to struggle. A moment later he began to scream through his gag. His muffled screams were sharp and piercing and echoed through the dark desert night as the flames rose up around him, swallowed him, and began to devour him.

  Then all of the robed figures around the altar began to chant something that made no sense to Bent and Coll. They chanted loudly.

  With all the noise, neither Bent nor Coll heard the tiny skittering sound on the rock. It was right beside Coll. Had they heard the tiny sound and looked in its direction, they would have seen the sun spider that was crawling toward Coll's hand, the hand that held the darkened flashlight. The spider was a good two inches around, with muscular-looking legs that clittered over the rock, moving rapidly, then stopping, then moving rapidly again; it was long and fat, rather antlike, and vaguely the same tan, sandlike color of the rock on which the two men lay.

  As the group below chanted, their voices resonating in the empty darkness, the spider crawled over Coll's left hand.

  When he felt the itchy sensation of something moving over his skin, over the back of his hand, he began to lift his arm to shake it off.

  That was when the spider bit him.

  It bit hard, very hard. The bite hurt, stung deeply, as if someone were driving a couple of needles into the back of Coll's hand and he could feel the fangs pierce his flesh, could feel them curl beneath the surface and dig in like hooks, dig in deep as if they had no intention of pulling back out.

  He shot upward and his left arm straightened suddenly, hard and stiff, his hand letting go of the flashlight. At the same time, he cried out, screamed in pain, jerking his hand through the air, up and down, up and down. The fangs did not have any intention of pulling back out.

  In an instant, he slapped a hand over his mouth and his eyes widened as he turned to Bent.

  The flashlight skittered and clacked over the rock ... then became silent as it fell off the edge of the boulder and tumbled downward through the air, end over end.

  The spider held on, its fangs digging even deeper as its strong legs tensed over the back of Coll's hand, giving the spider leverage so its bite became more ferocious. With his right hand still over his mouth, he made garbled sounds of pain into his palm as he started to lose his hold on the boulder and slide backward, slowly at first, a bit at a time, down the way they had come.

  Bent swung a hand out to grab him but was too slow.

  The flashlight hit the ground below and Bent peered over the edge of the rock to see that the impact had switched the flashlight on; its beam fell over the ground in a funnel shape.

  Coll first slid, then began to roll down the rock. The spider did not let go; in fact, it dug its fangs in even deeper as it was jarred on the way down the curved side of the boulder.

  As Bent looked down at the group, the chanting came to a staggering halt.

  One at a time, the hooded heads turned toward the flashlight, which jostled back and forth slightly, spreading its light over the ground.

  Then, slowly, a few of the hooded heads turned upward then a few more ... and a few more ...

  ... all looking at him.

  A voice murmured something. More voices spoke. They grew louder as they began to gather together beneath Bent, some talking among themselves, while others continued to look up at him.

  He jerked his head back, holding his breath. His entire body felt cold, as if he were in a vast freezer, and goose bumps covered his body like a blanket.

  Coll hit the ground at the base of the boulder, hit it hard, and rolled, grunting and in pain, over a number of other smaller rocks imbedded in the desert floor. He stopped on his back, still swinging his left hand through the air, teeth clenched behind tightly closed lips that failed to silence his sounds of pain. He slapped the hand to the ground twice, but the spider remained.

  Finally, he reached over with his other hand, curled his fingers around the spider, and ripped its fangs from his flesh, then smashed it to the ground hard beneath his right palm. He didn't know if he'd killed it, but hoped that it was, at the very least, in a great deal of pain.

  When he looked up, he saw Bent sliding down the side of the boulder on his ass, coming down fast, bringing small pebbles and clumps of dirt with him. When his feet hit the ground, he grabbed Coll's arm and dragged him to his feet, hissing, "Let's get the fuck outta here now, right now, they know, they 're coming, we've gotta go now!"

  Groaning — partially out of pain, partially out of fear — Coll hurried along with him, limping a bit at first. Then, evening his steps and quickening his pace, he and Bent went from a fast walk to a slow jog, and finally to a desperate run.

  Behind them, voices began to call angrily.

  "Get up there and find them, dammit!"

  "Where are the lights?"

  "They might be getting away already!"

  As they ran, their footsteps crunching on the ground, they began to pant, more out of fear than exertion, because both of them were pulsing with adrenaline. Behind them, the voices began to fade, but they continued.

  "Then spread out!"

  "Start looking and don't — "

  "Wait, I heard something!"

  "Yeah, over there!"

  "Footsteps. They're headed for the trailer!"

  The voices continued to fade as Bent and Coll continued to run. Bent still had his flashlight and flicked it on now and then, one hand shading the light, just to make sure their path was clear.

  Coll could feel his left hand swelling, could feel the skin tighten as the spider's bite made the back of his hand grow quickly, throbbing with hammerlike blows of pain.

  Suddenly the voices that had faded just a moment ago — although it seemed to both of them like an eternity — began
to grow louder. So did the footsteps hitting the ground quickly behind them. They could catch bits and pieces of what was being said about them.

  " ... long were they watching?"

  " ... couple of kids, maybe, or just ...”

  " ... that fucking reporter and his friend ...”

  They both heard it, and they both nearly tripped and fell on their faces. But instead of falling, they ran faster and faster, legs pumping harder, their cigarette-weakened lungs beginning to burn, their hearts pounding like timpani drums in their chests.

  Far up ahead, they saw faint light coming from one of the trailer's windows. Even though each of them didn't know he had it in him, they both began to run faster, leaving the voices and the footsteps a little farther behind as the trailer grew larger before them, closer and closer.

  "Run!" one of the voices called behind them, and it had a rather sinister joviality about it. "Go ahead and run!"

  Then, worst of all, came the laughter. From about three of them. As they began, once again, to gain on Bent and Coll.

  The trailer was closer. The light was closer.

  Their bags were inside the trailer. Inside Coll's bag was the key to the car.

  Bent's foot hit something and he shot forward, arms splayed.

  Coll grabbed his left arm just before he hit the ground and began dragging Bent beside him, until Bent was able to regain his footing and start running again, faster now, both of them, because those footsteps were getting closer behind them.

  Then, quite suddenly, almost unexpectedly, they had arrived.

  They slammed into the back side of the trailer, then hurried around to the front. They fell against the door and Bent grabbed the knob, twisted it hard, fumbled with it clumsily for a moment as the running footsteps and winded voices grew louder on the other side of the trailer, then threw the door open and stumbled inside with Coll close behind him.

  There were voices there in the dim candlelight of the trailer and they stopped immediately. Bent and Coll were on the floor, panting, with the door still open behind them, Coil's feet hanging outside. They got up stumblingly. Bent spun around, slammed the door, and locked it. Then he turned.

  Dave and Nattie Kotter were talking with a man in the living room, all three of them standing, all three of them staring at Bent and Coll.

  The man looked familiar in the poor light. After a moment Bent realized it was Tex. He still smelled and wore baggy, dirty clothes that looked like they hadn't been laundered in ages. The denim jacket hung on him unevenly, the shirt beneath it was green and heavy, stained with black, and his filthy, torn pants were dark, an indeterminate color, with some stains that still glistened. On his feet were dark, dirty, scuffed cowboy boots.

  He stared at them with his long, craggy, slightly whiskered face and sunken eyes.

  Kotter shifted his weight from one foot to the other nervously as he looked at Bent. He tried to smile.

  "Um, hey, Bent," he said uncertainly. "Somethin' wrong?”

  Nattie stared at them blankly, as if she had just been hit in the head.

  Tex smiled at them, revealing those dark, crooked teeth; his smile made his sparkling eyes narrow to crinkled slits.

  "Yeah," Tex said, nodding, "there's somethin' wrong awright. These're the guys. They've been pulling your leg big time."

  "What?" Bent asked.

  Coll asked, "Where's my bag, where's my bag?"

  "Yeah," Tex said, "I think maybe I should hold 'em for the cops."

  "The cops?” Bent shouted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Well, I've just explained how the two of you are wanted by the cops and that you ain't no reporter at all, not at all." He chuckled and folded his arms. "Are ya?"

  "Yes I'm a reporter, dammit!" Bent shouted.

  "Where's my fucking bag?" Coll barked. "It's gone! It was right here by the sofa!"

  "Your bag's someplace else, buddy," Tex said, his smile suddenly disappearing, "You're not goin' anywheres."

  There was a knock at the door.

  For a moment, everyone froze and stared at the door.

  The knock came again, but this time it was more of a pounding, so hard that it shook the whole trailer a little.

  "Don't answer that," Bent rasped.

  Tex gave him the smile again — long, crooked, gray teeth — and said slyly, "Why, you afraid a'somethin', buddy? Somebody lookin' for you?" He looked over his shoulder at the Kotters. "See? What'd I tell ya? The cops're after 'em and they know it as well as I do!"

  Tex stepped forward, taking long strides with his long, sticklike legs, and headed for the door, arm outstretched for the knob.

  Bent jumped in front of him. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about and you don't know who's out there!" he hissed. "You don't know what you're doing!" He struggled with Tex's arm, the arm that was outstretched to open the door.

  Tex's elbow drove into Bent's chest.

  Bent fell back against the wall with a grunt, expelling his breath in a rattle as if it were a fish bone caught in his throat, and slid down the wall to the floor, knees bent, legs spread. He dove forward and grabbed Tex's right leg, pulling him backward, trying to knock him off his feet.

  "Don't open that damned door!" Bent growled with effort.

  Tex jerked his leg from Bent's grip, looked down at him with a sneer, and kicked him in the face with the side of his boot.

  Bent's head snapped backward. He was blinded for an instant by a flash of white that exploded in his brain as the back of his head slammed into the wall. His lower lip began to bleed and he tasted the thick, wet copper in his mouth. He was dazed, limp, and his vision blurred, going in and out of focus.

  Tex opened the door.

  Two men in black, hooded robes burst into the trailer.

  "These're the guys," Tex said. Then he waved an arm backward toward the Kotters. "I'll take care uh them."

  "Noooo!" Bent cried, diving toward Tex. "They haven't done anything!" His head throbbed, but he couldn't bear the thought of them doing something to the Kotters because it would be his fault ... his fault!

  Suddenly Kotter cried, "Hey, hey, what're you doin', Tex?"

  In a heartbeat, the two black-robed figures had blackjacks in their hands ... and they used them.

  First over Coll's head, sending him to the floor in a heap, then over Bent's.

  Bent's vision blurred, but not so much that he could not see Tex produce a gun from his denim jacket ... that he would not see him aim and fire it twice ... first Kotter ... then Nattie ... both in the forehead.

  They hit the floor and hard.

  The blackjack came down again. Everything went away ...

  PART THIRTEEN

  Shoots, Soap,

  and Surveillance

  1

  Rex had called it a "shoot" and had insisted that she do it, so here she was, half-naked on a bed in a large room filled with lights pointing at her from all directions. It was a little chilly, enough to harden her nipples, but it wasn't bad; besides, they'd told her it was good that her nipples were hard.

  She'd been through worse. A lot worse.

  At first, the word "shoot" had frightened Lacey. She couldn't get the image of "invisible" guns being held on her, so she naturally thought that "shoot" had something to do with them. Thankfully, she was wrong.

  She still had trouble keeping track of the passage of time; all she knew was that days became nights and nights became days, and she could only determine that when she was taken outside the mansion, because inside, there was only a sort of plush, cool dusk. So she wasn't quite sure how long it had been when Rex had first suggested the "shoot" ... or even how long she'd been living in his enormous house. It frightened her because it sounded so violent, so ugly ... like it might hurt ... or even kill her: a "shoot."

  When she'd expressed her fear — silently, with nothing more than a look — Rex smiled and got off the bed naked, went to a bookshelf and returned with a magazine. He handed it over to her.

 
"You've seen this magazine before, haven't you?" he asked. He held out a copy of Visions. On the cover was a beautiful woman from the waist up, naked except for the black suspenders that just barely covered the nipples of her large breasts. The magazine's title was written in its trademark red letters, blurry, as if they were appearing in a dream or hallucination.

  "Yeah, sure," Lacey said. "Who hasn't seen it? It's everywhere."

  He smiled, white teeth framed by wet, glistening lips. "That's right. It's everywhere. It's mine. My magazine. I own it. I publish it. I'm the executive editor. And I want you in it."

  Her eyes widened slowly as she looked from the magazine to Rex, sitting up in the silk-sheeted bed and leaning back on the fat, soft pillows. "So ... that's why you looked so familiar the first time I saw you."

  "Yes, I suppose so." He tossed the magazine onto the large nightstand and sat on the bed. "I'm the one who decides who appears in the magazine and who doesn't. And I decided a long time ago that I wanted you. Now that I've met you ... I want a lot more than that. You'll be staying here. The complex ... they're going to hand you over to me. You are going to be very well taken care of. You'll have the best of everything. Anything you want. Whenever you want it. I'll see to that. Because you'll be with me. You'll be in all the magazines and papers, on all the television talk shows ... with me. You'll go to all the best places ... with me. You'll travel all over the world ... with me. I ... am going to take care ... of you. Better than anyone else has ever taken care of you before. And do you know why?" He smiled again, only a half smile this time, sly and secretive.

  "Why?" she asked, mouth dry.

  "Because you are going to be a star. I am going to make you a star." His voice was still the same: so quiet, so soft and throaty, so moist, as if he were sucking on a lozenge. But somehow, that mumbling voice was filled with a kind of enthusiasm, an excitement.