by Jack Kilborn
She was tall, muscular. A bit dirty, but not a long-time guest.
“I owe your dog several steaks. He saved my—”
“Are those keys?”
Maria nodded. The woman pulled them from Maria’s hands and rushed past.
“Hold on,” Maria said, hurrying after her. “We need to talk.”
“I need to find my daughter. She’s locked up in one of these rooms.”
“We’ll find her,” Maria said. “But you need to know what we’re dealing with here.”
“I know what we’re dealing with. Some real sicko freaks. Kelly! Can you hear me?”
“Mom!”
Kelly’s mother rushed to the next cell door, fussing with the lock.
“Which key is it? Which goddamn key?”
Maria put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Lady, you need to calm down a bit.”
“Calm down? Do you know what these people have done to us?”
Maria rested her hand on the keys. “Look at me. I’ve been here a year. I know what these people can do. And if you don’t listen to me, we aren’t going to get out of here alive.”
The woman looked like she was about ready to throw a punch, and Maria wondered if she just should get the hell out of there, leave them behind.
But the punch didn’t come. Instead, the woman managed to calm herself down. “I’m Letti. Thank you for opening my door. Can you help me with this one?”
Maria nodded, finding the right key. When she unlocked it, there was an intense mother/daughter/dog reunion. Maria was touched. She hadn’t seen a normal person since she’d been abducted, and certainly hadn’t felt love like she was currently witnessing. But they needed to get going. There were other prisoners. And Eleanor had guns, and more psycho children.
A lot more.
“We need to go,” she said.
Letti seemed reluctant to break the embrace with her daughter, but she did so. “Kelly, this is Maria. She just saved out asses.”
“After JD saved mine,” Maria said.
Kelly offered Maria her hand. She looked a lot like her mother.
“There are others down here,” Kelly said. “A pregnant woman, and a boy named Cam. I think he’s your brother.”
Maria’s breath caught. “Did… did you say Cam?” Without waiting for an answer, Maria cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, “Cam!”
“Maria!”
Sprinting across the hall, Maria unlocked the next cell door she came to. Seeing Cam—her brother Cam—standing there with a lopsided grin on his face, turned her tear ducts into faucets.
When she hugged him, it was so tight he yelped. Maria threatened to fall apart, the sensation was so overwhelming. For a moment this living nightmare faded away, replaced by happy, childhood memories of safety, security, and love.
“We found you,” Cam said. “Me and Felix. We’ve been looking all year.”
Maria held Cam at arm’s length, her eyes getting wide. “Felix? He’s here?”
“They took him to see a guy named Ronald.”
Ronald? Oh, no…
“Ronald’s not a guy,” Maria said. “He’s a—”
“Someone help me!”
The female voice came from one cell over. Maria reluctantly let go of Cam and hurried to the next door. The cell’s occupant was older, late thirties, dressed in a tattered house dress. Her hair was long, and just as matted as Maria guessed her own hair to be. The bump on her belly was large enough for her to be in her last trimester.
“Oh, thank God,” the woman said, falling to her knees and weeping. “I’ve been praying for so long to get rescued.”
But Maria wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking of Felix, with Ronald.
I need to get out of here. I need to help him.
“What’s your name?” Letti asked the woman.
“Sue Corall.”
“Are you alone, Sue? Are there other people with you?”
“My husband, Larry.”
“Is your husband here?”
Sue didn’t answer, but her eyes glazed over.
“Sue?”
“I… I think he’s in the next cell. Jimmy… the hunchback… he… he keeps…”
Letti took the keys from Maria, who was staring at the cell door across the hallway.
I know that one. That’s my cell.
I’ll die before I’ll let them put me in there again.
“Oh… Christ.” Letti turned away from the door she just opened. Sue came waddling over, but Letti grabbed her shoulders, refusing to let her see.
“He’s my husband!” Sue implored.
“Sue… you really don’t…”
“Let me go!”
Letti allowed the woman to pass, and Maria made the mistake of following her into the room. The odor hit her first; feces and urine and rot.
But seeing was worse than smelling.
“Whoa,” Cam said.
Sue’s husband was lying on the dirt floor.
At least, what was left of him was.
The man was missing one leg, his left hand, half of his right arm, an ear and an eye. Badly stitched wounds on his torso spoke of other missing parts. His shoulders were also dislocated, cocked out at odd angles.
Strappado. This poor bastard.
Sue shrieked, falling on her knees next to her husband, cradling his head. He moaned at the tender action.
His teeth are gone, too.
Larry said something. Even without teeth, Maria got the gist of it.
“Kill… me. Please… kill… me.”
“Help him,” Sue cried. “Someone help him.”
Maria felt terrible for both of them, but she didn’t see how they’d be able to get him out of there. Larry was in too much pain to even turn his head. Besides, Maria had to find Felix, and fast. It could already be too late.
“He wants to die.” Everyone looked at Cam, who had come into the room. He had an oddly serene look on his face.
Sue shook her head. “No. No no no.”
“Please… kill… me.”
“We can get you help,” Sue implored. “We can get out of here, and get you help. Get you doctors.” Sue patted her belly. “This is your baby, Larry. Yours. They think it’s theirs, but I was pregnant when we came here.”
“I… want… to… die. Please…”
Sue clenched her fists and beat them against her thighs, moaning.
Cam knelt next to Sue. “You love your husband.”
Sue could barely speak through her sobbing. “More… more than anything.”
“Then you have to let him go.”
“No. God, no.”
Letti put her arm around Sue’s shoulders. Cam stared down at the man. “You want to die?”
Larry nodded.
Maria’s stomach bottomed out. She didn’t like the direction this was heading.
She said, “Cam…?”
Cam touched Larry’s cheek, gave it a gentle caress. And then, with a quick, violent motion, Cam grabbed the man’s head and twisted it around 180 degrees.
The crack was so loud Maria could taste it.
Sue let out a wretched sound, somewhere between a scream and a sob. Kelly buried her face in Letti’s shoulder. JD hunkered down, his muzzle hair standing on edge, baring his teeth at Cam.
Maria was awestruck.
She thought about Cam’s past, his ordeal years ago when he and his friend were abducted by a pedophile. Cam hadn’t been the most stable child in the world before then, but afterwards he’d become withdrawn, and quite literally a danger to himself and others. He was committed into a psychiatric institution, given therapy and various drugs, but his condition never seemed to improve. While locked up, he was even accused of doing something unspeakable to another patient, even though it was never proven.
Could Cam—my dear, sweet, little brother Cam—be more disturbed than I ever imagined?
Or was he just being merciful when he snapped that poor man’s neck?
“We have to
find Felix,” Cam said, standing up. “Sis, do you know how to get out of here?”
Maria simply stared at him, unable to reconcile his actions.
“Sis? We need to move before they come for us.”
“How many of them are there?” Letti asked.
Maria spoke in a monotone, keeping her eyes on Cam. “A lot. Eleanor, she names each one after a President.”
Kelly said, “There have been forty-three presidents, Mom.”
Letti put her hands on her hips. “Are you saying that crazy old bitch has forty-three crazy mutant children running around here?”
Maria thought of that old nursery rhyme, the one Eleanor was fond of repeating.
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
“I think she’s only had around twenty,” Maria said. “But she brings women in here. Gets them pregnant. Some of the babies don’t survive. Birth defects. And she kills the baby girls. Says no girl will ever be president.”
Letti gripped Maria’s arms. “How many are we talking here, Maria?”
“Including the children?” Maria said.
“Yes. Including the children.”
Maria closed her eyes, doing a mental count. “From what I’ve seen, there are more than fifty.”
Florence stared at the woman sitting on the floor of her closet—the women she’d just hit in the face—and instantly recognized who it was.
“You’re Deborah Novacek.”
Florence knew her because she was perhaps the most famous athlete competing in Iron Woman.
Deb looked like hell, filthy and frazzled, and now bleeding from her nose. She stared up at Florence, and then kicked out one of her prosthetic legs.
Florence side-stepped the kick and spread out her palms.
“Easy. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to hit you, but I didn’t expect you to be in my closet. My name is Florence Pillsbury. I’m a triathlete, too. Are you in trouble?”
Florence watched as Deb processed this. The poor girl was shaking all over. “Trap doors. Secret passages. Someone got into my room. A freak, with red eyes. He’s chasing me.”
Florence immediately helped the girl up.
“Are you hurt? Who got into your room, dear?”
“We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to—”
The knock at the door cut Deb off. Both women stared at it.
Florence asked, “Who is it?”
“This is Sheriff Dwight, of the Monk Creek Police Department. Can you open up for a moment, ma’am?”
“Sher—”
Florence clamped her hand over Deb’s mouth, cutting her off. This didn’t feel right.
“Just a second,” Florence called. Then she whispered to Deb, “I’ve got a weird feeling. Go hide under the bed.”
Deb shook her head. “No way in hell.”
“The bathroom then.”
“He’s the Sheriff.”
“There’s something in his voice I don’t like. Please hide while I talk to him.”
Deb chewed her lower lip. Then she nodded and walked to the bathroom, bouncing on her curved prosthetics.
“Mrs. Pillsbury?” The Sheriff said, knocking again. “Please open the door. It’s about your granddaughter.”
When Florence saw Deb was locked in the bathroom, she went to answer her door.
The Sheriff was a tall man, plump, pasty, wearing an ill-fitting police uniform. His hat was askew on his head. There was also something funny about his eyes. The edges were bright red.
They’re bloodshot. He’s wearing contact lenses to hide it.
“What about my granddaughter, Sheriff?” Florence only opened the door a few inches, and kept her foot planted behind it, like a doorstop.
“You need to come with us.”
Us? But he’s alone. Unless…
Florence craned her neck back, trying to see around the Sheriff. She caught a glimpse of a man behind him. A tall man, in overalls. He had a large jaw, and a rounded forehead that came to a point. Having done missionary work around the world and seen countless impoverished and disabled people, Florence recognized the man’s condition as microcephaly. He was what circus sideshows called a pinhead.
Not a person normally associated with law enforcement.
Florence’s uneasy feeling about this inn quadrupled when Deb showed up in her closet, but now it was off the charts. She realized her whole family was in danger.
Okay, now that I know the threat, I can deal with it.
Florence took a deep breath, centered herself, then stepped away from the door.
The men burst in. The microcephalac clapped his hands together and giggled, and the Sheriff offered a mean grin, showing that dental hygiene wasn’t one of his top priorities.
“Granny, that was a big mistake.”
He hitched up his belt and rested his hand on the butt of his gun, striking a rehearsed pose that was probably meant to intimidate.
Florence wasn’t intimidated. With her right hand, she struck the Sheriff’s jaw, driving his head upward. With her left, she shoved his wrist away from his holster and snagged his gun.
“Don’t move,” she said, backing away. “Don’t either of you—”
“Get her, Grover!” the Sheriff yelled.
Grover either always followed orders, or he was mentally impaired and didn’t recognize the threat of a gun. It didn’t matter either way to Florence. The microcephalac was twice her weight, and if he grabbed her it was over.
She shot him twice in the chest, and he fell like a redwood, crashing into the floor with a thump almost as loud as the gunfire.
Then she turned the revolver on the Sheriff.
“Where’s my family?”
The Sheriff’s eyes got wide, revealing more of their red-rimmed edges.
“Granny, put down the gun.”
“My family. Or I shoot you like I shot him.”
The Sheriff cast a quick glance at his fallen partner.
“We got ‘em. Ain’t no way you gettin’ ‘em back.”
“How many people are holding them?”
He stayed silent. She pulled back the hammer on the revolver.
“How many?”
“A lot more than the four bullets you got left, Granny. You got no idea what’s goin’ on.”
From the bathroom, Deb screamed.
Then Grover grabbed Florence’s ankle.
Felix stared, slack-jawed, at the figure slinking out of the cave. Its golden eyes caught the moonlight and glinted.
Ronald isn’t a man. He’s a mountain lion.
A surge of adrenaline temporarily overrode the pain in Felix’s tortured fingers, and he pawed at his pocket, trying to get at the handcuff keys. He slipped his shattered index finger into his jeans, pushed down, and screamed when it bent the wrong way.
He withdrew the finger, his whole body shaking in raw agony.
Ronald cocked his head to the side and padded closer, in no obvious hurry. Felix knew he needed to focus on the keys, but he was transfixed by the cat as it approached. The musk smell got stronger, and Ronald’s tail—broken in several places and shaped like a jagged lightning bolt—swished back and forth. It was strangely beautiful, almost hypnotic.
Then the cougar hissed, revealing three inch fangs, snapping Felix back into reality.
Handcuffs. Focus on my handcuffs.
Felix tried his unbroken pinky. Wincing, he slid it into his pocket, but couldn’t get down deep enough to grab the keys. He could just barely touch the metal ring with his fingertip, but couldn’t hook his pinky around them.
Ronald stalked closer to Felix, head down, eyes shining. The beast was huge, easily over two hundred pounds. Each paw was bigger than Felix’s face.
Ignore the pain. Get the keys.
Grunting, Felix forced his pinky in deeper, bending his ring finger back, the broken phalange bones grinding against one another, his previous knife wound splitting open.
&
nbsp;