The desk light was on in the study. He couldn’t remember if he had left it on or not. It worried him, but he was glad for it, at least it meant he didn’t have to go into a dark room. He stuck his arm into the study and turned on the overhead light.
He went into the study and looked at the bookcase. It seemed normal; everything seemed to be in place. Except one book ... the second volume of a five-volume set on the history of Louisiana was in the wrong place. It was one shelf down from where it should have been. He pulled it from the shelf as gently as if he was afraid of waking it.
He started to return it to its rightful place, but then he thought to look inside it.
It had been many months since he had referenced this volume, that part of his research was most likely complete, but he knew that when he had last held it, the book had not contained two neatly folded pieces of loose paper. One was for a deed to a house on a few acres of land. The other was a car registration, for a Blue 1969 GTO, the same model and year of the car that had been stolen from him. Both the house and the car belonged to someone named Boaz Pendleton.
He returned to bed, with the question, “Who is Boaz Pendleton, and why do I have his documents?” burning in his mind.
Sunday February 16th
3:00 a.m.
Jeremy woke suddenly as Aldous pounced on his bed. Aldous’ knees were outside Jeremy’s arms, leaving Jeremy hopelessly tangled in the sheets. Aldous’ hands found Jeremy’s throat, thumbs digging into Jeremy’s carotid arteries. Jeremy struggled but was too thoroughly pinned to do anything more than squirm and. with no blood flow to his brain, within moments he slipped into darkness.
Jeremy came back to consciousness with something wet and about the size of a pencil sliding between his lips, which were being pinched shut. As the wetness between his lips quickly became hot, Aldous showed Jeremy the tube of glue. Jeremy tried to scream, but Aldous still had his lips pinched tightly shut, and he could only produce a muffled “mm-mmm.” Aldous continued to hold Jeremy’s lips for what felt like a very long time.
In the short time Jeremy was unconscious, Aldous had expertly tied his hands behind his back, and his ankles to each other. Jeremy struggled to understand what was happening to him as Aldous wrapped another loop of rope around his knees, pushed his knees to his chest, wrapped a loop with a complicated knot around his neck, and tied his knees to his wrists. Aldous finished by tying Jeremy’s ankles to his wrists.
Aldous stood over him and said, “Okay Jeremy, I just want you to know that if you struggle, you’ll strangle yourself. Every move you make will make that noose tighter, and nothing you can do will make it looser. So it’s fine with me if you want to struggle, but only if that’s how you want to die. Otherwise you’ll want to stay still.”
Aldous produced an extra-large gym bag, and in a practiced series of motions, threw it over Jeremy, flipped Jeremy and the bag over so that Jeremy was face down in a fetal position inside the bag and zipped the bag shut.
Jeremy felt himself lifted and slung over Aldous’ shoulder. The journey downstairs was full of painful bumps against the wall and banister. There were also enough bumps that the loop around his neck was starting to constrict. Every wrong motion caused it to get a little tighter. It had gone from being fairly loose to fitting like a mildly snug necktie. Outside he heard the car’s trunk pop open and tried to scream as he was dropped in. He felt some motion, and heard the bag’s zipper as Aldous unzipped it a few inches above his head. Aldous had enough experience to know the opening was just enough to keep Jeremy alive, but as uncomfortable as possible.
The journey from his bed to the trunk had taken so little time and had been so violently disorienting that it was only in the abrupt silence of the trunk that Jeremy’s thoughts suddenly turned to Sarah. She had fallen asleep in his arms, but had not been in the room while Aldous had bound and bagged him. Where was she? Had she somehow left before Aldous arrived? What time was it? Had she fled? Had she hidden? Was she already dead?
His mind spun, but the quiet of the trunk, the significant but not quite panic-inducing difficulty of breathing, and his enforced immobility quickly pushed him into a state that was still if not exactly calm. He was helpless. He was resigned.
There was a strong, almost overpowering smell in the trunk. After a while Jeremy identified it as blood.
Sarah’s experience had been considerably gentler than Jeremy’s. She had gotten out of bed to get a drink of water. She hadn’t seen Aldous as he crept up behind her and she was unconscious from his choke hold before she had a clue as to what was happening.
When she came to, it took Sarah a while for her to understand her plight. She could see nothing, and her hearing was quite muted. The audio-visual deprivation was disconcerting, but there were some tactile sensations she could not ignore. There was something large and round in her mouth that she couldn’t push out with her tongue. When she pushed she could feel the cords that came out of the ball cut into her cheeks and pull on the back of her head. Though she had never had one in her mouth before, she realized that it had to be a ball gag.
She could tell she was seated in a straight-backed, hard-seated chair. She couldn’t move. She was tied to the chair, both around the chest and at the knees and ankles. Though she was wearing a T-shirt and panties, she felt naked.
Her hands were behind the chair, and she recognized the feel of handcuffs on her wrists. No amount of wiggling could free her.
It seemed like a long time before Aldous pulled the hood off her head. Somehow it didn’t surprise her much to see him; he had always made her nervous. Seeing his face brought back a memory from high school: in PE class one day a police officer had given a lecture in self-defense. The vivid detail in her mind was the officer saying that once they let you see their face you know they are going to kill you, so you should fight back as hard as you can.
Aldous spoke in his most gentle, reassuring tone, which Sarah found absolutely horrifying. She would have felt better if he had been trying to scare her. He said, “I am sorry for this, Sarah, but there isn’t time for things to move at a more leisurely pace. Right now I need your cooperation, and I don’t have time to convince you how important it is. We are going to go for a ride. I would prefer that you be comfortable, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If I take the gag out of your mouth, will you promise not to scream?”
Sarah considered her options and nodded her head. She figured it would be better to have the option to scream, if there was an opportunity when it would do some good. Screaming in Jeremy’s kitchen wouldn’t accomplish anything except make Aldous put the gag back in her mouth. Aldous walked behind her and removed the gag. When she didn’t scream he removed the ropes from her knees and ankles.
He said, “We are going to have to hurry. Are you willing to walk out to my car and get in under your own power, or do I need to make other arrangements?”
Sarah’s mind spun. Every bit of survival information she had ever heard said not to go anywhere with someone who is probably going to kill you at the destination. On the other hand, there wasn’t anything stopping him from killing her in the kitchen. She had no chances here. She might have a chance there. Putting off her death seemed worth it unless he just wanted to take her somewhere that he could listen to her scream. But if she agreed to walk she might at least be able to try running when they got to the street.
Sarah agreed to walk. Aldous cut the ropes from her chest. He left the handcuffs on. He draped one of Jeremy’s jackets over her back, hiding the fact her hands were cuffed, and led her outside to the GTO. There was nobody visible on the street, and Sarah was pretty sure Aldous could outrun her. When they got to the car he opened the driver’s side door and held the front seat forward so she had to get in the backseat. The car smelled of bleach and something else that she couldn’t quite place.
He got in the car and said, “I’m sorry, but you aren’t ready to know where we are going.”
He put the hood back over her head and told her to lie down. Feeling helpless once again, she did.
With no points of reference, it was hard for Sarah to guess how far they drove. But she was certain from the wave-like feel of the road that they crossed Lake Pontchartrain on I –10. Because parts of the road settled into the swampy ground, the stretch of road right after the bridge has a very unique, choppy day at sea, feel to it.
After a while, she could tell they had left the highway. They seemed to drive for a long, long time, over a series of ever worse roads. Somewhere in the course of the drive her mind became very clear. She was going to have to pull herself together and find a way out. She started to explore her environment. The jacket had fallen mostly behind her on the seat. She started feeling through it with her fingers, searching for something she could use.
In the right front pocket was a paperclip. Sarah knew from experience she could pick the handcuff’s lock with a paperclip. She had dated a sidewalk escape artist a couple of years earlier, and he had shown her a lot of tricks. He had always carried a couple of generic handcuff keys, but he had shown her how easy handcuff locks were to pick, with just a little patience and practice. For a little while they had toyed with the idea of combining their acts, so she even had practice at picking the locks. All she needed was a little time and a little less bouncing than the car was providing. She tucked the paperclip into the waistband of her panties.
Eventually, the car slowed, and made a hard turn and the ride got rough. Shortly after that the car stopped. She heard the door open, and the car shift as Aldous exited. He instructed her to sit up. His touch was surprisingly gentle on her arm as he helped her out of the car. Under her bare feet and around her ankles Sarah could feel tall, damp grass.
The air smelled clean. They were definitely far from the city, not that that was any surprise after the long drive. The only sounds were their footsteps, the clicking of the car cooling down and a chorus of night insects. Aldous told her when to step up. They went up four steps and then he walked her inside a building. Sarah missed the country night sounds as they walked inside. They were a happy sound, a sound of life; leaving them she felt like she was being cut off from life.
Steering her slightly a couple of times (to avoid doorframes?), he walked her down a fairly straight path (a hallway? the rooms of a shotgun shack?). Then, without warning, he took both arms and lifted her. He set her on something that had a round edge under her thighs, and her feet were brushing what might be the legs of a stool. Her feet didn’t touch the floor. She heard a rattle behind her then felt the cold metal of a chain slide between her hands and wrists, looping around the chain between her cuffs. There was a click, which could be nothing but the sound of a lock snapping shut. The chain hung from her hands. She had no idea if she were chained to the wall, floor, ceiling, or nothing at all.
Without a word he left. She heard his footsteps recede down a hall. She squirmed about a bit, trying to get the paperclip out of her panties. During the walk in, it had slid down from the waistband and was now dangerously close to the opening of the leg. She was sitting on it at the moment, but retrieving it would involve pulling the fabric away from her body and that would give the clip a chance to fall. For that matter, the contortion she’d have to do to lift her left cheek and get her cuffed hands to the clip might put her at risk of falling – she had no idea how stable the stool was.
The clip was against her left cheek. She pushed it into her flesh with her left thumb, then slid her index finger up to it. To her surprise, the clip slid free easily.
Once she got it, she pulled it slightly open and stuck the point of wire into the release hole for the left cuff’s double lock. This made it possible to release the lock, but also made it possible for the cuff to squeeze tighter if anything were to bump it before she got it picked. She used that hole to bend the wire to a right angle. Then it would be just a matter of fishing around in the keyhole to release the lock, except before she could, she heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall. She stopped working the lock, and held the clip in her clenched fist.
The footsteps stopped and something heavy hit the floor. A fresh fear seized Sarah: what if Aldous wasn’t acting alone? What if he had a partner? What if he were part of a cult?
There were a series of sounds she couldn’t make sense of, fabric rustling and muffled thumpings. Whatever he was doing involved heavy lifting.
Aldous pulled the hood off her head. She was seated in the corner of a smallish room, lit by a single bare bulb. The walls and floor were covered in galvanized steel. There were no windows, only a door.
Jeremy was naked and tied to a large wooden cross in the adjacent corner of the room. Between them there was a small table holding a small knife and a tube of glue.
Jeremy struggled against the cross, but he could find no slack in the ropes. His eyes were wide and panicked. His lips were oddly puckered and slightly twisted, and stayed shut despite his head tossing, and jaw working wildly. Sarah couldn’t figure out his lips: it was like he had gotten stuck between expressions.
Aldous said, “Sarah, my love, there is something I need you to see. It won’t be easy for you, but it will be better this way. In the days that come I will show you how to drink souls. But right now, I just want you to see – to know how something ends.”
Aldous turned his attention to Jeremy and looked deeply into his eyes. Jeremy tried to turn his head away, but Aldous’ grabbed him by the chin and held his face forward.
“There was a time, Jeremy, when I would not have considered wasting a soul. Even now I hate to do it, but I don’t want to have anything to do with you, and I certainly don’t want to have any part of you in me. And so, you die ... and since your soul will not be able to leave your body, I suspect it will die too.” The only part of the speech that made sense to Jeremy was that he was about to die.
Still holding Jeremy’s chin, Aldous reached down to the table and commanded, “Watch carefully, Sarah, you need to understand.”
Aldous stuck the tube of glue up Jeremy’s left nostril, then the right. He pinched Jeremy’s nose for a moment. Then he stepped back.
Suddenly Sarah understood Jeremy’s frozen mouth. Even though Aldous was in the room and might hear, even though her hands were shaking, she had to act.
Jeremy had managed to inhale deeply as soon as he realized what Aldous was doing, but he was beginning to question the wisdom of that action. He realized that by inhaling he had bought himself a few extra seconds, or maybe even minutes of life, but that that extra time would be nothing but suffering. The curing glue was burning his nostrils, but he didn’t care about that. He tried exhaling hard, hoping he could force a gap in his glue sealed skin, but all he accomplished was making his eardrums hurt.
Aldous stood watching the show. His expression showed no more interest than if he were taking a moment to see if a stranger running after a bus would catch it.
The absolute hopelessness of his situation filled Jeremy with an odd sense of calm. There was nothing he could do; he was going to die. He hung from the cross watching Aldous watch him. Maybe his panic would return when his lungs started to ache, which would be soon, or maybe he would slide slowly and uncomfortably, but still calmly, into darkness.
Jeremy’s calm left when he saw movement behind Aldous. He couldn’t imagine how, but Sarah had gotten free. He still had no hope for himself, but he was flooded with hope and fear for Sarah. To try to keep Aldous’ attention – to give her a chance to escape – Jeremy started struggling madly, which more or less meant throwing his head back and forth, while making a series of grunting “mmm” sounds in his throat.
Aldous stepped closer, and grabbed his chin again. He pulled Jeremy’s face forward. “You’re only wasting what little air you have left.” Aldous looked amused. He added, “You aren’t even turning blue yet.”
Sarah’s arm snaked around Aldous’ throat, and slid back the way
it came. A fountain of blood poured over Jeremy. Aldous’ mouth and eyes opened wide. Wordlessly Aldous staggered towards the door, and stumbled out through it.
Sarah looked into Jeremy’s eyes. He had so much he wanted to say to her, which was, of course, impossible under the circumstance. He hoped he could convey a fraction of it through his eyes, but he knew that most of what he was showing was probably panic.
Sarah stroked Jeremy’s cheek with her left hand. He thought to himself that he didn’t want to die like this. It wasn’t fair. He had made it past twenty-six – he had beaten the curse. He was falling in love, and now he was about to suffocate in front of the woman he loved.
Holding his head still with one hand, Sarah plunged the knife into Jeremy’s left cheek, just behind the big muscle that works the mouth, and in front of the muscle that works the jaw. The knife slid past his teeth and nicked his tongue, but he didn’t care; he could exhale.
His breath came out a bloody froth, and worse it came back in as a bloody froth. Jeremy fought hard not to choke, and turned his head so the blood would pour out of his mouth. If he was careful, he could breathe. It hurt, but that didn’t matter.
Sarah began working on the ropes. Though the knife’s blade was small, it was very sharp. It was a mistake to cut Jeremy’s arms free first, because between the time he had spent tied up, both on the cross and before, and an overall lack of oxygen in his system, Jeremy didn’t have the strength to support his upper body. This lead to another near-choking episode, with his body hanging upside down from his waist, but with a few more cuts he was free from the cross, kneeling on the floor.
Once he was off the cross, Jeremy held the wound in his cheek open with a finger on either side of it. It hurt, but it helped his breathing.
The Whisper Garden Page 13