Ugly As Sin

by James Newman

  “Don’t try to fight it, handsome,” said a voice behind him. “Won’t do you any good. We just need you docile for the next few hours. Like a big ole’ puppy-dog...”

  A laugh from the man with the gun, as he slid behind the wheel. For the first time, Nick caught a glimpse of his face: tan skin, very white teeth, long blond hair. He watched Nick lose consciousness as he pulled on a pair of fancy leather driving gloves.

  How could you let this happen? Nick asked himself, but the thought was strangely disassociated, as if it didn’t come from his own brain at all. As if he were just now recalling an old friend with a speech impediment asking him the question six years ago.

  Someone in the backseed...now you been drugged...and you think you’re gonna saaave her? Stooopid...mother...fuggggggg...

  The world dropped out from under him then, and everything went black.

  †

  The hum of tires on pavement. A dry cough. Someone complaining about the President on a talk radio station turned low.

  Nick floated in and out of consciousness. He dreamed he lay in a tiny boat under a starless night sky; the tide kept pushing him to shore then jerking him back out to sea before he had a chance to step foot on solid ground. He sensed he was sprawled in the Hummer’s backseat now. How much time had passed? Impossible to tell. He felt heated leather seats beneath him, smelled pine-scented air freshener. Two large human shapes sat up front, silhouetted against the green glow of the dashboard lights. He could hear snippets of conversation, but their voices were oddly muffled, as if a thick wall of cotton separated the big man from his abductors.

  “He’s waking up. Reckon you oughta dose him again?”

  “Better not. Even at his size, too much might kill him.”

  “What was that stuff again?”

  “Ketamine. It’s a horse tranquilizer.”

  “Where in the world did you get something like that?”

  “I used to date a veterinarian, remember? She was from Taiwan. It’s big in the rave clubs over there. After hours, the doc was a real party girl. I sure do miss her. The things she could do with that mouth...”

  “Oh, hell—would you look at that! He fucking puked! He’s making a mess of my seats.”

  “Look what he did to my Mercedes, no thanks to you.”

  †

  “What the hell is he saying back there?”

  “Sounds like he’s singing.”

  Nick heard it too, as he briefly came awake again. The singer was tone-deaf, couldn’t carry a tune in a dump-truck.

  Then he realized it was his own hoarse voice butchering his favorite John Lee Hooker song.

  “Serves me right to suffer,” he babbled along with the blues on the stereo.

  But the SUV’s radio was still tuned to a talk station. The music was a figment of his delirium. Nick knew this. Yet somehow, at the same time, he couldn’t fully comprehend it.

  He made a farting sound with his mouth, fell back into the pitch-black waters of unconsciousness.

  †

  A turn signal tick-tick-ticked. Gravel crunched beneath tires. Crickets chirped through an open window.

  “Ever wonder if it’s worth all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean...the Charlies are dead. And for what? We both know the old man’s mind ain’t what it used to be.”

  “Watch your mouth, Jeremy. It’s worth it to Daddy. Nothing else matters.”

  The duo rode in silence for a while. For five minutes, maybe. Five hours. Perhaps for several days. Nick couldn’t tell, as he continued to drift in and out of consciousness.

  Then: “It could be a long night, you know. There’s one more thing we’ll need to do before we can close the door on this mess once and for all.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When we get him back to the house, we’re gonna have to...do stuff to him.”

  “Something tells me you’re not talking about giving the guy a makeover.”

  “No. Although he could use it. We’re gonna rip out his fingernails, blowtorch his balls, whatever it takes to find out where his daughter is staying.”

  “Sounds like a party. So...we’re torturing people now?”

  “Getting an attack of conscience all of a sudden, Mr. I’ll-Slice-Off-One-Of-Her-Tits?”

  “I was only trying to scare him. Playing a role.”

  “I’m not crazy about the idea either, Jeremy. But it’s a necessary evil. The twins should have cleaned up all the loose ends to begin with. They didn’t. Now they’re dead. So we’re forced to get our hands dirty.”

  “That’s why you told me to pop the guy in the Camaro. He was a loose end. I get it now.”

  “Like I’ve said before, Daddy should have put me in charge of this whole thing from the start.”

  “I’m with you there. When you wrote that script, forced the kid to call her mom and read it? Frigging brilliant.”

  “It worked until this asshole came to town and started stirring shit up again. Daddy sent Charlie One to take care of business, but he never had the stomach for stuff like this. Then Two panics ’cause of one little seizure. Pulls his stunt at the drugstore, gets his mug plastered all over the news. Unbelievable.”

  The screams of multiple sirens passing in the night. A chorus of emergency vehicles, fighting to be heard over one another. Rising then fading in the distance, Doppler-style...

  “There they go.”

  “Look at what you started. When you threw him in the Camaro, torched it and drove it off the edge of the ’Rim? Watching you work...it was like fucking art.”

  “I don’t know about that. I just did what had to be done.”

  “Have I ever told you that’s what I love most about you?”

  “Feel free to tell me again.”

  “You can be one ruthless cunt when you wanna be, Little Sister.”

  †

  His brain was a cantaloupe gone soft with rot. Even after he was fully awake and—for the most part—had his bearings, he couldn’t quite make out the features of the two people standing over him. His vision blurred, focused...blurred, focused...as if he were watching an amateur film shot by a cinematographer who didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

  “Ya know,” said a voice, “now that I get a good look at him...whoa. I never expected it to be this bad. He is the definition of ugly.”

  “You can say that again,” said another voice.

  “I mean, how do you go through life looking like that? I’d never leave the house. Probably woulda slit my wrists the first time I looked in a mirror.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve always been a little vain, Jeremy. You spend more time fixing your hair than most lipstick lesbians I’ve known.”

  Whatever Nick was sitting in—he got the vague impression of a large wooden chair with soft, cushioned seats—rocked from side to side as one of the figures kicked it.

  “Bullman. Hey, Bullman. You awake?”

  “Rise and shine, handsome.”

  “I’m awake,” said Nick.

  “I was just telling my sis here...I didn’t realize till I saw you up close how hideous you really are,” said the one named Jeremy. “Know what you remind me of? A shaved ape. No, wait...a shaved ape with Down’s Syndrome.”

  “After a really bad car accident,” said the one called Little Sister.

  They laughed together. Loudly. Cruelly.

  Nick found himself chuckling with them. He was still feeling the dissociative effects of the drug the woman had dosed him with. As if this were happening to some other guy while he watched. He felt sorry for the poor bastard. Was rooting for him all the way.

  He said, “I didn’t just fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down, right? I planted the tree, watched it grow, then one day the fucker fell on top of me.”

  If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em...

  This all felt like some surreal fever dream. A remix of the song of madness Rebel Yell and One-Arm had composed for him thre
e years ago. Nick was gripped by a feeling of déjà vu stronger than any he had felt before. He almost expected those two cackling, black-and-white-striped fools to enter the room any moment, and finish what they’d started that night in Amarillo.

  He shuddered. His teeth chattered, although he wasn’t cold.

  At last, his vision fully cleared, and he was able to get a good look at his abductors...

  The man was thirty-something, tall, broad-shouldered. He wore a purple dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and lots of gold: several rings, a hoop in one ear, a wristwatch that probably cost more than Nick’s late Bronco. His straight blond hair fell halfway down his back. His long hair and bronze skin gave him the appearance of a surfer dude dressed up for a court appearance.

  The woman wore a charcoal suit over a blue dress shirt and a thin, silvery tie. The suit was a size too small. Her body rippled with more muscles than Nick had ever seen on a female. Veins stood out on her neck and wrists like worms trapped under her skin. She wore her hair in tight cornrows. On her left cheek were three long, scabbed-over scratches.

  Somehow, Nick’s drug-addled brain put the pieces together: he remembered Leon telling him how he had witnessed Sophie “clawing one of the big dudes in the face” the night she was abducted. Here was the “big dude” in question, he assumed. An honest mistake.

  That’s my girl, Sophie...I hope it hurt like hell...

  Nick took in his surroundings. He sat in a small, square room with cream-colored walls and plush carpeting the color of blood. An expensive-looking lamp sat on an end-table in one corner, beneath a framed print on the wall: a black-and-white photograph of the Hollywood sign circa 1970 or so, when the famous landmark was in dire need of repair. Otherwise the room was empty. Just Nick and his new friends.

  “How are you feeling?” Jeremy asked him.

  “Like a pile of dogshit that’s been stepped in and smeared around,” said Nick.

  “Funny. You look like it too.”

  Nick scowled at the younger man, but then he laughed too. He wished he could stop doing that. He felt like a teenager after his first sip of beer or toke of wacky weed. Whatever the bitch had dosed him with, he had to admit it was some really good shit.

  And then he wasn’t laughing anymore...

  Little Sister’s fist was like a boulder in his face. She stepped forward, hit him with a massive right hook that would have impressed Nick under different circumstances. He never saw it coming, and didn’t think he had ever taken such a punch. Maybe that one time, when...no, that just happened. He was already flashing back to this, here, now. Damn, the stuff in that needle had really fucked him up. He could barely differentiate between up and down, left and right, or the present versus fifteen minutes ago. Kaleidoscope colors flashed before his eyes, and for the next few seconds he couldn’t feel the bottom half of his face.

  “What’d I do to deserve that?” Nick asked through a mouthful of blood.

  “That was for Charlie One,” she replied, “and this is for Charlie Two...”

  She leapt into the air, caught him in the nose with a brutal roundhouse kick.

  He was surprised she didn’t knock his head completely off his shoulders that time. A few more of those, Nick was quite sure his skull would go flying across the room like a battered old basketball with eyes, and it would splat against that picture of the Hollywood sign on the wall.

  He blinked. Cursed. Spat a glob of blood onto their fancy carpet.

  “How do you like that?” Jeremy asked him.

  “Didn’t care for it much,” said Nick.

  “You’re gonna like it a lot less before the night is over,” said Little Sister. She asked her brother, “What about you? Do you want to get a few in?”

  “I’m good for now.”

  “This guy killed the Charlies. He cut our family in half, like that.” She snapped her fingers, and the sound was very loud in the small room.

  “Maybe later.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Enough,” said a new voice behind the siblings. An ancient, rasping voice like dead leaves rustling in a dank crypt. “I know you kids are enjoying yourselves. But Mr. Bullman is our guest. He deserves to be treated as such...for now.”

  The two quickly stepped aside, so the big man could see who sat there in the doorway. Although Nick already knew.

  “Bring him downstairs, please. It isn’t often I get to show off my collection. I am very much looking forward it. And there is someone who is dying to meet him.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” said the siblings.

  †

  “Where is she?”

  “In due time, Mr. Bullman. In due time.”

  “I want to see her. I want to know she’s okay.”

  “I didn’t live to be ninety-three years old by being impatient. You could learn a few things from a man like me. I assure you, the child is safe.”

  “Take me to her,” said Nick.

  “Soon.”

  Hiram Balfour rode along in a motorized wheelchair that hummed softly across hardwood floor. A wrinkled green pajama suit swallowed his gaunt frame. A few thin wisps of snow-white hair sat atop his wrinkled head. The old man’s flesh was covered with liverspots. One spidery hand lay in his lap like a dead bird; the other gripped the controls of his chair like a demon’s claw wrapped around the throat of a small child.

  They headed down a long hallway. Little Sister walked beside the old man, a bizarre sight in her cornrows, too-small suit, and bulging muscles. Jeremy walked behind Nick. While Nick was still a bit unsteady on his feet, the drug had gradually begun to release its hold on him. Little Sister had suggested they cuff him, but the old man said that wouldn’t be necessary.

  They passed a tall archway on their right, through which Nick caught a glimpse of the house’s main foyer. He got the impression of extravagance, unimaginable wealth, a residence larger than any he had ever seen. Marble floors. Ornately-carved banisters. Cathedral ceilings and immense crystal chandeliers. From somewhere in that part of the house, “Fur Elise” played on what sounded like a scratchy old Victrola.

  “Forgive me if I do not show you the rest of the house,” said Mr. Balfour. “I know you do not care about any of that anyway. You are here for one reason, and one reason only.”

  “You’ve got my number,” said Nick. His heart raced as he knew he was coming closer and closer to seeing Sophie for the first time.

  When they reached the end of the hallway, they entered an elevator. It was small, cramped. All four of them fit inside, but just barely. Nick stood beside the old man’s chair, looking down at the top of his skull.

  It would be so easy to end this...right now...

  No. Gotta find Sophie first. Let them lead me to her. Get the child out of harm’s way. Then...and only then...

  Little Sister pushed a button. The elevator door closed.

  They went down.

  The old man stared straight ahead as the elevator descended. His breaths were very loud in the confined space. He wheezed like something choking out its final death rattle.

  Nick said, “I’m guessing this is the part where you spend the next twenty minutes boring me with your nefarious plan.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Isn’t that usually the villain’s downfall?”

  Mr. Balfour laughed. It was an obscene sound, like a mold-covered door creaking open to reveal a cellar full of rotting corpses. “That would assume I am the villain here. Which is a matter of perspective. I have no ‘nefarious plan.’ I am simply a man who is proud of his collection, and wishes to show it off to a guest in his home.”

  The elevator stopped.

  “And here we are...”

  The elevator door opened. Little Sister stepped out, flicked a switch on the wall.

  Fluorescent lights flickered on.

  Before them was a rectangular room, its walls and floors painted a uniform gray color. Two long, gray metal shelves traversed the length of the room, both of them nearly as
tall as the ceiling.

  Mr. Balfour said, “You’ve heard of Robert L. Ripley, I’m sure? Of Ripley’s Believe It or Not? He has long been a personal hero of mine. In fact, it was reading about Ripley and his adventures throughout the world when I was a much younger man that started my...obsession...in the first place.”

  “What is this?” said Nick.

  “There was a time in my life when I collected...oddities of nature, if you will. Freakshow abnormalities. ‘Pickled punks.’ The practice of preserving and displaying these poor souls has been around for centuries, starting with King Frederick III of Denmark, whose collection numbered in the thousands. Throughout the years, I discovered that many of them were gaffes, hoaxes created by smooth-talking conmen. But just as many were real, a testament to God’s cruelty.”

  Mr. Balfour coughed gently, before rolling on. He was weak, and obviously did not have many years left on this Earth, but a fire burned in the old man’s eyes as he spoke of his bizarre pursuits. The motor on his wheelchair hummed like something alive, malevolent.

  Little Sister walked behind Daddy, her shiny black shoes clicking softly on the concrete floor like a clock counting down the seconds until this all came to a head. Meanwhile, Jeremy hummed some tune to himself as if he had seen it all a billion times before.

  As they passed those metal shelves, Nick saw hundreds of glass jars of every size and shape. Inside the jars, floating in yellow liquid, were mutated infants—human, bovine, feline, and species he could not identify. Some had more than one head, or flippers for legs, or huge, hydrocephalic skulls. Scattered among these pickled punks were countless manmade cryptids as well, such as a shriveled monkey torso sewn to the bottom half of a fish (“the original Fiji Mermaid, leased for twelve-dollars-and-fifty cents a week by none other than P.T. Barnum himself,” Mr. Balfour explained, “even fooled The New York Sun at the height of its popularity”). Here and there were stuffed calves, rats, dogs, and lizards with two heads or more. A thousand glassy eyes stared back at Nick as if waiting for the big man to blink so the beasts could attack in unison.

  If he weren’t so intent on finding Sophie and ending this once and for all, Nick might have been impressed with the crazy old coot’s collection. Although he never would have admitted such a thing. Perhaps he would have been gripped, too, by the odd sensation that he shared a sort of kinship with the freaks on display.