DARK VISIONS

by James Byron Huggins

  “And what do you think you see?”

  “I see a murderer.” Joe Mac grimaced. “Some might call you a psychopath. But I like to call ‘em like I see ‘em.” There was a dark, possessed silence. “You killed my grandson. You killed all of them. You gave the word, and they were dead. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t pull the trigger. You gave the word, and it was done. And that makes you a murderer. And that means you’re gonna die.”

  Stillness.

  “Are you feeling cold, detective?”

  Freely Joe Mac nodded, “Yeah.”

  “That’s because all the blood is leaving your body. Now you feel cold. Soon you’ll be dead.” He was taking his time as if waiting for Joe Mac to fall. “I understand why you might be suspicious of me. But I am not the high priest of those savages. I was with you tonight, and they almost killed me, too. Remember? So why would I have put my life in such danger? What you are inferring makes no sense.”

  “That’s exactly why you did it,” said Joe Mac. “Because it makes no sense.”

  “Why are you convinced that I am the man you seek?”

  “You made mistakes.”

  Professor Graven hesitated. “What mistakes?”

  “The police department never knew that me and Jodi were going out to Long Island to talk to Montanus. But you knew.” Joe Mac finally smiled knowing it was a ghastly sight. “You’re the one that gave Marvin the name. And then Marvin gave it to us. But Marvin didn’t know any better. He didn’t know you were setting us up to die.” He let that settle. “You deceived Marvin like you deceived everybody else.”

  “Marvin told others, as well.”

  “But the others didn’t know we were meeting the captain in the park. Only you knew. That’s two strikes.”

  “Agent Rollins also knew.”

  “Rollins is dead, so he’s not a suspect. And since you killed him just so you could lure us to that dock, I don’t think Rollins ever sold us out. I think you sold us out. All of us. Then you told us we’d never make it out of that graveyard, or that tunnel, alive.”

  “So?”

  “I hadn’t said anything about that tunnel. Or that graveyard. But you said we’d never get out of that graveyard alive.”

  Professor Graven hesitated. “Of course you mentioned it.”

  “No,” Joe Mac shook his head. “I didn’t. But you knew all about it because you knew about that entrance. And you knew that Jodi and Marvin had gone to Chamberlain’s place because you were there when I sent them. That’s how they got ambushed so fast. You told your boys where they were going.”

  “You’re delirious, detective. This is nonsense.”

  “And you didn’t go to the museum yesterday to look at any black and white pictures. You went to make arrangements for your imposter because you couldn’t very well preside over a ritual – not like you usually do – and fight beside us at the same time.” A pause. “Did your substitute know he was going to die for you?”

  The professor said nothing.

  “That’s how your high priest knew we were in the crowd,” Joe Mac continued, a slow breath. “He knew because you told him.” A nod. “Yeah, you led us into an ambush hoping we’d get killed, and then you could slip away unnoticed, and that was a mistake. And then you said that the high priest wore a red death mask.”

  “I knew that from the drawings.”

  “The drawings are in black and white. But you knew the mask was red because that’s the mask you’ve always worn for the Wicker Man.” Joe took a deep breath. “Yeah … But your greatest mistake was that little boy.”

  Professor Graven muttered, “How was the boy a mistake?”

  “You said that that little boy was the last one.”

  Silence.

  “Only someone who made the list could know that that boy was the last one,” Joe Mac said with a hoarse breath. “Of course, I couldn’t confirm that he was the last one. But then your imposter said the same thing. He confirmed it. And I knew.”

  A stillness joined them superimposing a silence that lasted and lasted until, finally, Professor Graven spoke solemnly.

  “For a blind man … how much you know.”

  Joe Mac didn’t blink.

  “If you were so convinced that I was this Ri, then why didn’t you arrest me yesterday?” asked Professor Graven. “Or the day before?”

  “Because you weren’t my priority,” whispered Joe Mac. “Saving that little boy was my priority. I wasn’t gonna let him die like the others. And if I’d arrested you, or killed you, your people would have still killed him. They would have just done it in their own time.” He paused for breath. “Killing you wouldn’t have stopped them from doing that.”

  “You put your friends in great danger,” Professor Graven in an accusing voice. “You care so little for them that you would risk their lives for this lunacy? They might have all died in what you fantasize is a grand conspiracy between myself and those barbarians. It is difficult for me to believe you care so little for them.”

  “I care enough to keep them out of this.”

  Professor Graven’s grunt with clearly contemptuous.

  “You know, of course, that no one will believe you?” Professor Graven stated very calmly. “It is a fantastic theory. And there is no one who can testify that I am the Ri. Also, you have no evidence. No proof. All you have is your word against mine. And you will need far more than that to level charges of kidnapping and murder.”

  “We’ll see.” Joe Mac had to shift his numb grip on the .45. “When this started, I was gonna kill you when I found you. But somewhere … somehow … I passed from revenge … into justice. Now, I think spending the rest of your life in a prison will be a thousand times worse for a man like you.”

  Graven paused. “You’re going to die tonight, detective.”

  Joe Mac laughed weakly.

  “I know …”

  A car screeched to a stop outside the front of the house and someone began banging on the door. Graven didn’t move and then shots thundered at the front step and there was a crashing sound. In the next moment, Joe Mac heard a familiar voice …

  * * *

  “Joe!”

  Jodi instantly raised aim at Professor Augustus Graven as she saw Joe slumped forward on a stool at the counter, blood soaking his entire body.

  “Don’t move!” she shouted and quickly, cautiously began to make her way across the room toward Joe, who seemed barely able to hold his head up.

  His .45 was in his right hand, his forearm resting on the counter. He was breathing with deep, labored breaths and faintly lifted his face as she drew closer. Then Professor Graven hesitantly leaned to his right as if to take a small step and Jodi froze with her aim hardening on his chest; “DON’T! MOVE!”

  The professor settled in place.

  Jodi was at Joe Mac’s side and she knew he was moments from death. Shifting the Glock to her left hand, she placed her right hand on his shoulder and leaned close, “Joe? We’re gonna get you to an ambulance, okay? Can you hang in there for me?”

  She was still watching Professor Graven with her peripheral vision and was oh-so-ready to pull the trigger if he made a move. She wasn’t worried about the paperwork or even the right or wrong of it. She only knew that he was responsible for all this and – one way or another – she was going to make him pay.

  “Uh!” Joe groaned and fell to the side.

  Jodi twisted to catch him.

  Professor Graven moved and Jodi fired following him by inches across the room as he dove over the couch. She instinctively caught Joe Mac in both arms as he pitched fully from the stool and put her back to Graven as she quickly dropped Joe Mac to the floor. Then she spun as she stood, searching with a level aim.

  Jodi was ready to kill but she needed a target and the professor was nowhere to be seen. Moving quickly to the couch she
glared down, her finger taking all the slack out of the trigger, her breath racing.

  He wasn’t there.

  She backed up, scanning the second-floor balcony. She spun toward each open door primed to fire at the first shadow or silhouette. She blew out a hard breath trying to reduce the oxygen that was making her vision white and narrow.

  Her brain was simultaneously calculating a dozen factors – the distance he could have traveled in that split-second; the location of the gun case; the sound a hunting rifle makes when it’s loaded; the certainty that he would never surrender …

  From the floor, Joe Mac groaned, “You have to kill him …”

  “I know!”

  A thunderous blast caused a huge section of wall to disintegrate in front of Jodi’s face, and her first reaction was to twist away throwing her arms over her head. Then she realized it was one of the elephant rifles the professor kept in the gun chest as she dove over the couch, rolled across the floor, and reached her feet to charge through an open door.

  She barely glimpsed – at the very last – the professor as he leaped into a door frame and fired another deafening round from the rifle, and then she was running full-out; the rooms were all interconnected, and Jodi fled through three before she threw herself against a wall trying to gain control of her emotions and breath.

  Somewhere in the house she heard the crack of a breach viciously slammed shut and knew the professor had rapidly reloaded.

  “ … Think! … He’s only got two shots at a time! … Make him shoot and hit him before he reloads! … And get him away from Joe! …”

  Blowing out a focused breath, Jodi bent her head …

  Listening.

  She heard nothing but the echoing thunder of the elephant rifle.

  In her mind, she began scanning and throwing off blueprints of the house – all she knew – calculating angles and connecting corridors and steps and doors trying to select the best place for an ambush because she was absolutely going to blow his brains out from the back of his head if she got the shot; there would no warning, no chance to surrender.

  Get him away from Joe!

  She visualized the closest corridor before she yelled, “I’m in here, Graven! What are you waiting for!”

  Jodi launched herself into a run at the last word but barely made the corridor as the wall where she’d been standing was blasted into dust by the incomprehensibly powerful double-barreled rifle; she didn’t know if Graven quick-loaded another round in the next split-second because she was charging down a cobblestone walkway that ran along the long back wall of the house.

  She already knew there was nothing in this mansion that would serve as “cover.” That elephant gun packed enough punch to blow a hole through a concrete wall, so blasting apart wood or marble was nothing.

  The wall to her right was stone, and Jodi knew Graven had to be on the other side so she didn’t worry about sound. Even he couldn’t hear through a stone wall. Then she reached a pair of French doors and stopped quick to see if –

  Stone exploded from the wall in front of her chest at the same second she heard the titanic eruption of the rifle, and Jodi was again running all-out along the wall as another blast tore through the space where she’d been standing. She calculated how many seconds it’d take him to reload both barrels as –

  She dropped to her knees raising arms over her head.

  Jodi didn’t know why she ducked, but she did as the granite above her head was vaporized by two near-simultaneous blasts. Then she threw herself forward knowing even Graven couldn’t reload that fast; she chose to bypass the French doors, and then the only place to go was a door that led back into the house; she charged through it expecting a bedroom but it was a library and she kept running.

  She needed distance. She needed time to think. Time to set up. Time to find the right angle and wait for Graven to come around the corner so she could hit before he could acquire her as a target. But as she went through the next door she stopped.

  It was a bathroom.

  Jodi spun.

  A shadow was approaching along the outside walkway; she saw it along the cobblestones at the base of the frame. She whirled in every direction, searching.

  A previously unseen door came into focus on her left and Jodi quietly moved to it. She gritted her teeth as she turned the knob, and as a rifle barrel moved into the entrance she silently slipped through, closing the door.

  She was inside the house again and knew this hall connected to four rooms on her left. If she moved to the right she would be adjacent in the kitchen. If she moved through the kitchen she’d be back in the front room. If she …

  For god’s sake just move!

  She crept down the hall and stepped into the third room on her left. She didn’t pick the first room because it wouldn’t give her enough time to acquire Graven as a target if he was in her tracks; she needed more time to take a solid aim.

  Inside the door she dropped into a crouch, switching the Glock to her left hand. Then she laid the slide against the frame for a bench rest, closing her right eye. When Graven emerged from the door of the library, she had a clear line of sight, a clear shot. She’d put one round in his chest, run, call for backup and let him bleed out.

  Jodi stilled her breathing. Then she remembered that Graven wasn’t only a famous African butcher, he also had trigger time in Vietnam, and so he was no fool. He might very well anticipate an ambush like this and retreat to come at her from another angle.

  She waited …

  The door didn’t open.

  Her eyes darted left searching for any shadow that could be coming up on her from her blind side but saw nothing. Then, very warily, she lowered her head to look down the hall that led toward the front of the house.

  If Graven –

  She screamed as a bullet exploded from the wall.

  Jodi didn’t know she was on her back until she rolled into the hall and frantically began scrambling backwards. Then she flipped to her feet and began running, ignoring the commotion she was making with screaming and smashing into tables and portraits and everything else that served as high-priced décor for the mansion.

  She didn’t have to think about it: Graven had fired straight into the wall from the library and the bullet had smashed a hole through that wall and every other wall in front of it and probably exited through the brick exterior at the driveway and kept traveling even beyond that until it hit a tree that might have finally stopped the buffalo round. And he had very intelligently aimed so that bullet had skirted the inside wall – the very place she’d taken for the ambush. But Jodi had been on her knees – something he didn’t anticipate – and the round had only brushed her hair as it ripped past her head.

  She couldn’t help visualizing what would have happened if she’d been hit; they’d have to bury her in a soup can.

  She waited, her back against the kitchen wall. She was trying to listen but the blood in her ears and her heart thundering in her chest was all she heard. She blinked, trying to focus, but that didn’t work either. She was hot, hot, hot and swept sweat from her face as she glimpsed a shadow move on the face nail flooring outside the kitchen.

  The shadow fell across the threshold.

  Jodi lifted the Glock and began firing through the wall to the left of the entrance. She fired a full clip and then frantically leaped to the side as Graven surged into the entrance with the rifle already level at his hip.

  She charged through another doorway as Graven pulled the trigger and the kitchen was filled wall to wall and ceiling to floor with a muzzle blast that replicated the detonation of a stick of dynamite. But it was something Jodi sensed and didn’t see because she had hurtled a couch. Still running, she knocked over a chair and rebounded off a table as a second shot disintegrated a marble statue at her side.

  Her thoughts were coming too fast for conscious terror but she
realized she was almost out of places to run and then she saw what had to be the garage door; she ripped it open and leaped past the steps to land on the smooth cement floor as she saw a second stairway that rose along the opposite wall.

  It connected to the second floor – it had to. There was no other place it could go, and she was going to take it because there was no other place she could go, either. She swung around the rail and charged upward only to smash into the door.

  It was locked.

  Jodi took one step back and fired three rounds through the lock, then threw her shoulder into it; the door was blasted open and she was through. She slammed it but knew she had to move fast because now Graven knew exactly where she stood and he’d be maneuvering to fire straight up through the floor to quite literally blow her to pieces.

  But then – with a control that shocked even herself – Jodi began easing down the hallway. She was barely lifting her feet – not even raising them a fraction of an inch – and trying to orient her position to the bottom floor layout.

  She knew she had to be between the library and the kitchen, and Graven’s last shot had come from the door leading into the kitchen, she aimed the Glock at the floor. If he shot up, she was shooting down. Although the nine millimeter Glock wouldn’t smash a hole through a stone wall it would still go through a sheet of plywood.

  Suddenly a devastating wave of exhaustion washed over her, and she eased her back against the wall abruptly afraid she was going to faint; she closed her eyes tight, concentrating on all her horrifying fear to keep herself alert and energized. Sweat was dripping from her nose and lips and she shook her head to throw perspiration from her face but it wasn’t enough. She quickly swept her right forearm down her face trying to clear away the sweat burning her eyes blind with every blink.

  Where is he!

  In an even more vividly alarming moment Jodi thought that Graven might have gone back to the front room where Joe was lying helplessly on the floor. But in the same instant she knew he hadn’t.

  No, now he was in this for the kill. This was a hunt to him, and he was a hunter. Whether Graven was aware of it or not, he was following his insatiable instinct to hunt her down and kill her the same way he hunted and killed any other endangered species.