Bring Her Back

by Jeff Strand

  "No."

  "He was a good kid. He didn't do anything wrong."

  "Okay."

  "Of course, my wife didn't believe that you were some random nut, so I had to tell her almost everything. I'm sure I've lost her, too."

  "Did you tell her that you killed Abigail?"

  "No, Frank. I did not tell her that."

  "Are you going to tell her that you killed me?"

  Robert shook his head. "No. Because she'll want to see a body. And it's going to be a long time before there's a body to show her."

  I was pretty sure I understood where this discussion was headed, but I felt I should clarify it to be sure. "So you're going to torture me?"

  "Yeah, Frank, that was my plan."

  "So why shouldn't I just let you shoot me?"

  "I don't care what you do, quite fucking honestly," said Robert. "If you want to attack me, attack me. See what happens. I don't give a shit."

  I suspected that what would happen is that he'd shoot me in the leg. I could manage the situation better if I weren't shot in the leg, so for now I decided to go along with him. "I'm not going to attack you."

  Robert shrugged. "Saves me a bullet."

  "What happens now?"

  "What I'd love to have happen is you take that goddamn rake you threatened my wife with and you use it to bash yourself in the skull until you knock yourself out. But I don't think that's practical. So you're going to inject yourself with some stuff that'll put you to sleep."

  He picked up a hypodermic needle that rested next to the lamp.

  It wasn't relevant to the narrative thus far, so I've felt no need to share that I have a major needle phobia. Given the choice between being buried alive for a week in a snake-filled coffin or getting a shot, I'd take the week of being buried alive.

  Robert seemed to notice my intense discomfort. He grinned, though it was more of a pained grin than a sadistic grin—he was still grieving the loss of his son, after all. "Sorry. Couldn't get any chloroform on short notice. I don't even know for sure that the shit they said is in the needle is actually the shit that's in the needle. It's not like I got it from a licensed doctor. It might kill you. Might burn holes through your veins."

  My stomach hurt and I was sweating. It was the worst I'd felt since gazing upon Abigail's dead body.

  "Heads up, don't get poked," said Robert, tossing the needle to me. I caught it. "Inject yourself."

  "Where?"

  "Arm, ass, it doesn't matter. Jam it in your eyeball for all I care."

  I desperately tried to think of a way to fake the injection, but he'd see the fluid running down my arm. My choices seemed to be limited to refusing to do it and getting shot, or injecting myself and hoping for the best when I woke up.

  Better to do it myself than to get shot and have him do it. He might very well stick it in my eye. I picked up the needle with a quivering hand. If I didn't do this quickly, I might lose my nerve and decide that it was better to take a bullet, so I jabbed the needle into my upper arm, quickly depressed the plunger, and injected an unidentified substance into my body.

  It didn't burn. It felt warm and soothing.

  I withdrew the needle and dropped it onto the floor.

  Robert stood up. "You really are an idiot, you know that? You should've picked up that knife and slashed your own throat. I'm not sure I can convey just how bad this is going to be for you, but you'll find out soon enough."

  I was getting really dizzy. I fell to my knees. I didn't believe I'd made a mistake. I couldn't avenge Abigail if I was dead, right?

  I closed my eyes, and then woke up immediately.

  No, it couldn't have been immediately, because I was somewhere else. A small room. The walls had blankets over them, as if to muffle the sound. I was strapped to a wooden table that wasn't quite long enough for me; my feet dangled over the edge. There was duct tape over my mouth.

  I was naked except for my boxer shorts, which were streaked with blood. My body was swollen and covered with bruises, as if they'd been beating the crap out of me while I was unconscious. And it was "they," because Robert, the mustached man, and the blond were in the room with me.

  Robert took a small bottle out from under my nose. "Good morning, Sunshine," he said. The words were obviously meant to be mocking but there was no joy in his voice. "This is going to be your new home for a really long time."

  I was so sore that it outweighed the fear, but only momentarily.

  PART THREE

  a horror story

  [Transcript of call between Maynard Devon and Debbie White.]

  DW: SWC Publishing, this is Debbie White, how may I help you?

  MD: Do I really not show up on caller ID?

  DW: I try to be professional when I answer the phone. It's a lost art. [laughs] What's going on?

  MD: This guy is killing me.

  DW: Frank Johnson?

  MD: Who else would I be calling you about?

  DW: Well, if Frank Johnson is killing you, that's appropriate, don't you think? [laughs]

  MD: Funny.

  DW: What's the problem this time?

  MD: I can't get him to talk anymore.

  DW: About anything?

  MD: He'll talk about other stuff, but I've already told you what that's like. This whole project has been a nightmare. Trying to drag anything out of him is like pulling teeth. I can barely understand him even when he's focused, but he's usually all over the place. You promised I'd get used to looking at him. I assure you, Debbie, I am not getting used to looking at him.

  DW: I get it. It's a shitty ghostwriting gig and you deserve more money. Do you need me to fly out there and give you a hug?

  MD: No, I'm just saying that we've hit a wall. He won't talk about what happened next.

  DW: Not at all?

  MD: He'll close his eyes and you can tell he's thinking about it—which is creepy as hell, by the way—but that doesn't do me any good, since I failed all of my mind-reading classes in college.

  DW: Well, just keep trying, I guess.

  MD: What if I just made up the ending?

  DW: Excuse me?

  MD: Back in the stone ages I was a real writer, with self-respect and stuff. I'll make up the rest of his story.

  DW: No. Hell no. We'll get sued.

  MD: Who's going to sue us? Him?

  DW: Absolutely not. I'm sorry that it's not as pleasant as ghostwriting the autobiography of a wife-beating rapper, but he agreed to tell you the whole story. He has a contract. Make him tell it.

  MD: You make him tell it. I've spent weeks working through his scary-ass gibberish trying to turn it into something people might actually want to read. I'm sick of this.

  DW: What do you expect me to do?

  MD: I don't know. Give him a blowjob or something.

  DW: Pretty sure you just crossed a line, Maynard.

  MD: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just calling to vent. I never imagined it would be this frustrating. I feel like I'm going to end up as bonkers as he is.

  DW: Just remind him that he has a legally binding agreement to tell his story. His whole story. If you need another extension on the deadline, we can work that out.

  MD: Will you move me to an even cheaper motel?

  DW: Probably.

  MD: I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe I'll get the rest of the story out of him at gunpoint.

  DW: Whatever works! [laughs] Seriously, though, don't do that.

  MD: I promise nothing.

  DW: Anything else?

  MD: If you find a porn star who wants to write her autobiography, I get first dibs.

  DW: What about a porn star who went on a bloody murder spree?

  MD: Bitch.

  DW: Crossing that line again!

  MD: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just keep me in your thoughts while you eat bon-bons or do yoga or whatever it is you do when you're not the one stuck trying to decipher a lunatic's ranting.

  DW: I'll take a bubble bath in your honor.

  MD: I
hope you spill your champagne?

  DW: I do have work to do, so...

  MD: Talk to you later.

  DW: Bye-bye.

  twenty-one

  The blond, Lucas, had spent his eighteenth birthday raping and murdering his former babysitter. He'd lusted after her every Friday night when he was twelve and she was sixteen, and one evening after she told him it was time for bed he'd finally worked up the courage to make a pass at her. (Technically, "worked up the courage" was a lie he told himself; he'd actually lost control and grabbed her breast.) To diffuse the tension, Lily had fake-laughed and told him they'd revisit the issue when he turned eighteen.

  Lucas wasn't stupid. He knew that when he showed up at her house six years later she wasn't going to say, "The time is finally right! Take me now, birthday boy!" Her shocked reaction was exactly what he'd anticipated, especially because he'd had to drive almost four hundred miles to see her. This wasn't about sex anymore. He'd had sex with three girls by then—two attractive, one not so much—and if she had willingly spread her legs for him, he would have been disappointed.

  She was a good girl. She behaved herself. She didn't make noise when she cried.

  When Lucas was finished, he didn't really want to kill her. He preferred the idea that she was permanently traumatized by the experience, never able to let a lover touch her again. Unfortunately, she knew exactly who he was, so unless he wanted to go into hiding for the rest of his life, Lily had to die. She was relatively comatose after the rape anyway, so it wasn't all that difficult to get her into the bathtub, run some water, then slash her wrists. Investigators quickly figured out that it was a murder and not a suicide, but never traced it back to Lucas, who was back home before her body was discovered.

  It was the only time Lucas ever raped somebody, and he took pride in that.

  Marty thought he had an oddly shaped mouth, and the mustache disguised it. His girlfriend (which is how she saw herself—he considered her a friend with benefits, but was worried that the benefits would disappear if he corrected her) hated the mustache.

  "Don't you like being tickled?" he'd ask.

  "It doesn't tickle. It scratches. At least put conditioner in it."

  She didn't complain about it when he went down on her, because he never went down on her. Disgusting. He could understand guys who did it if there was no other way to get women to reciprocate, but...blecch.

  Marty had never killed anybody. He'd talked a friend into killing somebody once. His best friend Xavier's wallet had been stolen, and though Marty had no idea who'd stolen it, he told Xavier that he'd seen the mentally retarded boy who lived at the end of the street playing with it. Xavier marched over there to get his wallet back, and Marty eagerly followed, because he'd never seen a mentally retarded kid get his ass kicked. He was sure it would be hilarious.

  Dwayne was playing in his backyard. Xavier confronted him about the wallet. Dwayne was unequipped to plead his own innocence, and Xavier proceeded with the glorious pummeling. The kid let out hysterically funny high-pitched squeaks with each punch, and Marty laughed so hard he farted, which made him laugh even louder, and then Xavier started laughing too.

  Marty realized that this wasn't just funny, it was exciting, and he kept urging Xavier on, even when in the back of his mind he sort of knew that this was getting a little out of hand. Dwayne lay on the ground, still squeaking, and Marty kept saying, "Stomp on him! Break his ribs!" Xavier was happy to oblige.

  Dwayne didn't die in his backyard, but he did die in the hospital.

  Xavier was tried as an adult and remained in prison to this day, where he bragged about his crime but left out the "mentally retarded" part because he was kind of embarrassed by that. Marty claimed to have played no role in the tragedy, and in fact insisted that he'd tried to stop Xavier from committing this horrific, inexcusable act, but a jury believed otherwise and he was sent to a juvenile detention center.

  He'd be nostalgic for his time in the detention center when he spent a few months in prison (a different one than Xavier's) for stealing a car. His cellmate was not a peaceful man. Upon his release, Marty vowed to himself that he'd go straight, a promise that lasted exactly seventeen hours and three minutes.

  Over the next few years he did many things that his beloved grandmother would describe as "not very nice at all," but he'd never expected to find himself in a soundproofed room in a basement, thinking of ways to torture a guy who'd murdered some of his associates.

  Marty, Lucas, and Robert had the "anticipation" part down. I spent a lot of time lying there in the dark, waiting for something terrible to happen. Sometimes one of them would come in, sometimes two, and sometimes all three. They'd pour some water into my mouth, or let me sit up and eat a bowl of congealed oatmeal at gunpoint. (I assumed that they purposely let it sit out until it was unappetizing.) Every once in a while they'd bring me a bedpan. I was uncomfortable relieving myself in a public restroom when there was somebody at the next urinal, so you can imagine my performance anxiety when trying to pee with three guns aimed at me. I didn't even bother trying to defecate, but they weren't feeding me much so it wasn't an issue.

  What I mean by anticipation is that they would come in, looking intimidating, and one of them would be holding, for example, a pair of garden shears. They'd snap them closed a couple of inches from my ear, and then over my nose, maybe even close enough to nick the skin, and then down at my crotch. Then they'd file out of the room. Or Robert would come in with a meat tenderizer, and spend a few minutes lightly tapping various places on my body as if trying to determine which needed the most tenderizing, before leaving without actually hurting me.

  It was difficult to calculate time (the room had no windows, of course) but my best estimate is that this happened every two or three hours, and they tried to frighten me with about twenty different torture devices, so I guess I was there for a couple of days before they decided to step up their game.

  I should have expected what was going to happen because Robert changed the duct tape before he began the intimidation. He ran the tip of a hunting knife slowly down my leg, not breaking the skin, and then over each of the toes on my left foot, and then across the bottom of my foot, and just when I thought he'd remove the knife and leave me in the darkness, he jabbed the knife an inch deep into my sole.

  It's a good thing my mouth was covered.

  He bandaged up the wound and left.

  The next two sessions he came in with the same knife, and he did the exact same thing except that he didn't stab me. My stress level was high. The only thing keeping me from begging him not to stick the knife in was the fact that I would've been too muffled for him to understand.

  A couple of hours later, all three of them entered the room. Their faces were different. I knew before they said anything that the tease was over.

  "You're going to lose a toe," said Robert. "I don't mean that we're going to cut off your toe. That's too easy. We're going to scrape away at your little toe, like getting old paint off wood, until there's nothing but bone left."

  I don't feel like I need to offer a detailed description of what happened, except to say that Robert had not been bluffing. The pain was worse than anything I'd imagined during my time lying in the darkness imagining pain.

  It was not a speedy process.

  When they were done, they snipped off the bloody bone with a pair of bolt cutters, and left it on the table next to my head. They applied a generous amount of antiseptic, presumably both to keep infection away and because of the stinging sensation, then bandaged me up and departed.

  They returned later to work on the little toe of my other foot. But as Marty clamped the pliers over my toenail, Robert suddenly lit up like a young child seeing presents under a Christmas tree. He began to frantically gesture at me.

  "What?" Marty asked.

  "Let's Frankenstein him!"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Frankenstein him! Replace body parts!"

  "What the fuck are you talking abou
t?" asked Lucas.

  "We should cut off his arm. Then we dig up his girlfriend, cut off her arm, and sew it onto his body. How great would that be?"

  "We can't cut off his arm," said Marty. "He'd bleed to death."

  Robert vigorously shook his head. "Not with a tourniquet. We'll just grab the hacksaw, saw off his arm at the shoulder, tourniquet that shit right up, and then do a little surgery. It's perfect."

  Lucas sighed. "Look, you've got the most invested in making him pay for what he did. Personally, I think he'll bleed to death if we go that far. I don't know how to make a tourniquet."

  "We'll watch a video."

  "You're digging her up," said Marty.

  "No, if he goes we all go," said Lucas. "If we decide to take that risk—which I don't agree with—we're all going."

  "I didn't mean that I wouldn't go," said Marty. "I meant that he'd do the actual digging."

  "Uh-uh. We all dig. We get in and out as fast as we can."

  "You're right. That's fine. I shouldn't have said anything."

  "Frankenstein him," said Robert, looking as if he was experiencing his first moment of true happiness since his son's death. The joyless Robert was gone.

  "You okay with this?" Lucas asked Marty.

  "I'm on board."

  "I still think he's going to bleed to death before we get the arm sewn on."

  "Let's put the tourniquet on first," said Robert. "Get it as tight as we can. Completely stop the flow of blood. Let his arm rot off."