by Jack Kilborn
Almost… almost…
Too much. The pain overtook him, and the world swirled away. Felix’s vision dimmed at the edges, the darkness forming a tunnel that got smaller and smaller until he blacked out.
Felix awoke on his knees, hugging the pole, his face warm. He opened his eyes—
—and saw Ronald only inches away, his hot, feline breath blowing onto Felix’s face.
Felix felt the scream welling up, and then the cat’s massive paw shot out, catching his pelvis, spinning Felix around the pole by his cuffed wrists.
This seemed to amuse the cougar, because he batted Felix in the other direction, like a tetherball. Felix felt the rents in his hips, where the claws hooked flesh through the denim.
My hips?
Oh, no… my pocket…
He chanced a look down at his bloody, ripped jeans.
Are the keys still in there?
Felix patted the material, feeling warm blood and torn fabric. The pain was twofold, both his ruined fingers and the gouges in his hip seemed to be in a contest for which hurt more. But there, under the heel of his hand—
The keys. And they’re poking through the denim.
Using his pinky and his thumb, he pinched the protruding handcuff key—
—and Ronald bit into Felix’s foot.
The bite wasn’t full force, the cat’s teeth not even penetrating the shoe. But the pressure caused a muscle cramp.
He’s playing with me.
The cougar tugged Felix, pulling him across the ground, forcing his hand away from his pocket as his body extended.
Did I get the keys?
I can’t tell! I can’t see!
And then Felix was fully stretched out, his cuffs around the pole, his body pulled taught by Ronald’s grip.
Do I have the goddamn keys?!?!
He squinted into the darkness, saw the key ring wrapped around his thumb.
Ronald continued to pull. The cuffs cut into Felix’s wrists. The pressure on his foot got worse, twisting Felix’s ankle. His spine screamed, joints reaching their limits, sockets beginning to separate, cartilage threatening to tear.
He’s pulling me in half.
I’m so sorry, Maria. I tried. I love you so very much.
And then the cat released him.
Not stopping to celebrate his luck, Felix scrambled back to the pole, getting it between him and the mountain lion. Then, using his teeth and his lips and his two unbroken fingers, he managed to fit the key into handcuff lock—
—just as Ronald swiped at him again with his huge paw.
Felix’s world spun, and he rolled and rolled and came to rest on his back, staring up at the orange hunter’s moon. He wiped his sleeve across his face, clearing some blood from his eyes.
The cuffs. They’re off.
I’m free!
Felix didn’t bother to look for Ronald. He got to his feet, fighting ten different kinds of pain, and scrambled into the woods. When he left the clearing, the tree canopy covered the moon, making it impossible to see. Felix ran blind, his mangled fingers bumping off of trees, continuing forge ahead until he saw a light in the distance, a light coming up exceedingly fast.
It’s a tow truck.
That was Felix’s last thought before the truck plowed into him.
Mal stared at his hand. Jimmy was dangling it up over Mal’s face.
“The operation has been a success,” Jimmy said. “The patient has survived.”
Mal turned his head to see the stump of his wrist, one of the pointy bones still sticking out through the flesh. It wasn’t bleeding anymore—a quick dip in the white powder clotted the wound within seconds. But the pain was still there.
The pain went deeper than just Mal’s nerve endings firing off signals. The pain was also mental. The memory of what this monster had done to him—cutting the skin, snipping the muscles with scissors, using a hammer and chisel to get through the bone—that would haunt him for as long as he survived. Mal’s begging and pleading had devolved to incoherent bawling. Staring at the monster who had done this to him, the monster who gleefully held up his severed hand like a prize fish he’d just caught, was almost more agonizing than the physical hurt.
“Excellent work, my boy,” Eleanor said, setting down the camcorder. “Momma has to go check on the guests upstairs. But you might want to give your patient another examination.” Eleanor looked at Mal and smiled. “I think he may have some cancer in his feet.”
Eleanor patted Mal on the cheek, then waddled off, leaving through one of the operating room’s two doors.
“Foot cancer?” Jimmy said, his expression grim. “That’s a very serious condition. We’ll have to begin treatment immediately.”
Jimmy went to the instrument table, gripping a hacksaw in his oven mitt.
Mal cringed away, starting to babble again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
And then his arm, bloody and missing a hand, slipped out of the leather strap binding his wrist.
Without thinking, Mal thrust his traumatized arm at Jimmy as he inspected his saw, jabbing his protruding unla bone into the hunchback’s neck.
The pain was otherworldly. But the bone—sharp as a splinter from the chisel—cut deep into Jimmy’s flesh.
Jimmy grunted, stumbling backward, pressing both mitts to his wound. The blood gushed right through them.
“Laceration… to the… internal jugular vein… Need… QuikClot… to stop the bleeding…”
Jimmy reached for the bowl of powder on the instrument cart. Mal, his vision red with agony, thrust out and knocked the bowl away, upending it onto the floor. A plume of white dust hung in the air, then settled.
“Gone…” Jimmy’s red eyes grew wide. He stared at Mal. “You… knocked it over… The styptic…”
One of the hunchback’s hands stayed pressed to his pumping neck wound. The other picked up a scalpel.
Mal watched him stagger forward, the scalpel raised.
“You’re a doctor!” Mal managed to say. “You can stitch yourself up!”
Jimmy halted his advance. “Stitch…?”
“You can do it! You can sew up your wound! There’s a needle on the cart!”
Jimmy looked at the scalpel again, and Mal was sure the crazy son of a bitch was going to plunge it right into his heart.
But Jimmy didn’t. He dropped the scalpel, shook off the oven mitts, and grabbed the large, curved, surgical suture. He lifted the needle up, the thread dangling down, and stared at it.
“Do it,” Mal said. “Stitch up your neck. You can fix it. You’re a doctor.”
Jimmy nodded several times. “I’m… a doctor.”
Then he pinched the wound closed with his free hand and gouged the needle into his skin.
“Keep going,” Mal said. “You can do it. In and out, just like that.”
Jimmy pierced his flesh, again and again, showing a fair amount of enthusiasm. But enthusiasm didn’t replace skill, and after six stitches the wound was still gushing.
He’d also sewn his fingers to his neck.
“That’s it!” Mal said. He felt both ready to laugh hysterically and sob at the same time. He shook away both emotions, forcing himself to stay in the moment. “You’re doing it, Dr. Jimmy! A few more stitches and you’re done!”
Jimmy lasted one more stitch. Then he dropped onto his face.
Mal let out a breath, his head resting back onto the table. He closed his eyes.
It’s over.
Now I need to get out of here.
Maybe I can escape.
Maybe I can even find a doctor to reattach my hand.
It’s over.
The worst is over.
Then his eyes went wide with panic when he heard the door open.
Deb stole a glance at the framed poster of Ulysses S. Grant facing the toilet as she hid in Florence’s bathroom. Like the poster in the Roosevelt room, it seemed to be looking right at her.
Then she stared at the door, straining to hear what was
happening.
“Granny, that was a big mistake.”
Florence was in trouble.
What do I do? Go out there and try to help?
Anything is better than waiting in here for them to find me.
Deb flinched when she heard the gunshots. Two, in rapid succession.
Jesus, did they kill her?
“Hi there, girly girly.”
Deb spun around.
The poster of Grant was yawing open on hinges, and Teddy was slinking out into the bathroom through a hole in the wall.
He flopped onto the floor, reaching his hideous, double-thumbed hands for her, grabbing her prosthetics.
Deb cast a frantic look around, seek some kind of weapon. There was nothing. Just a sink, a toilet, and a shower. She lashed out at the poster, trying to break the glass.
Plastic. The covering is plastic.
Teddy began to pull himself up her artificial legs, groping at her underwear.
“How ‘bout you ‘n Teddy get familiar on the floor right here, girly?”
Deb felt herself losing balance, tipping forward. She reached for the toilet to steady herself, her hands slipping on the cistern cover.
The heavy, porcelain cistern cover.
She snatched it off the toilet tank, a flat slab of stone that weighed at least eight pounds. Without thinking, she slammed it down onto Teddy’s head.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
One the fourth strike, the cover cracked in half. Deb raised the broken piece, ready to bring it down again.
She didn’t have to. Teddy’s skull looked like a kicked pumpkin. His bloodshot eyes—popping from their sockets from the beating—stared at her accusingly. Deb pushed him aside, sliding his body across the spreading lake of blood, reaching for the door behind her, stumbling out of the bathroom to see—
BANG!
—a third gunshot, Florence shooting a man on the floor in the head—
BANG!
—the older woman fluidly bringing the pistol around and pulling the trigger as the Sheriff lunged at her, shooting him in the stomach. He dropped to his knees, clutching his gut.
“Deborah? Are you okay?” Florence asked, keeping her eyes on the Sheriff.
“Teddy… he got into the bathroom. He crawled through the walls. There are secret passages everywhere.”
“Come over here. I’ve got some jogging shorts and a sweater in my suitcase. Put them on.”
Deb looked at herself, half naked, and sought out the suitcase next to the bed, making sure she kept far away from the dust ruffle.
The Sheriff groaned. “Lordy, you got me good, granny.”
“The next one goes through your head, Sheriff. If you don’t want to end up like Grover here, tell me where my family is, and how many people are guarding them.”
The Sheriff shook his head. “Don’ matter none. I’m dead anyway. Wasted all my styptic on John.”
“That’s not a fatal wound.”
The Sheriff grinned. “It is for me. So you can take that gun and shove it up your ass, old woman. I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”
Deb sat on the floor, fighting to get the shorts up over her Cheetahs.
When she heard the Sheriff yelp, she looked up and saw Florence grinding her heel into the man’s stomach wound.
“Let’s get something straight right now,” Florence said. “I’ve seen some terrible things in my life. Things I promised I’d never do, no matter how desperate I got. But if you keep me from my family, I’ll break that promise and make your last moments on earth absolutely unbearable. Now I’ll ask you once more, and then I’m going to stick my finger in that bullet hole and pull your guts out. Where is my family and how many people are guarding them?”
The Sheriff made a grunting noise. Wincing, he said, “Rot in hell, you old bag.”
Deb’s mouth fell open as she watched Florence drop to one knee and jab her index finger into the Sheriff’s stomach.
The Sheriff thrashed for a moment, and then made good on both of his promises; he refused to talk, and he died.
Florence’s eyes went wide. She felt his neck. “He shouldn’t be dead. I was a combat nurse. It wasn’t a fatal wound.”
“Look at all the blood,” Deb said, pointing.
There was a large pool of red on the floor around the Sheriff. Pints of the stuff. A similar amount surrounded Grover.
“Styptic,” Florence said. “That stops bleeding.” She wiped her finger off on the Sheriff’s sleeve. “They’re hemopheliacs. Their blood doesn’t clot on its own.”
“Teddy said something about needing my blood.”
Florence shot her a look. “Are you O negative?”
Deb nodded.
“So am I. So are my daughter and granddaughter. Did you get the room for free?”
“Yeah.”
Florence wiped her finger off on the Sheriff’s sleeve. “So did we. When we filled out the applications for Iron Woman, we listed our blood types. O negative is rare. Less than seven percent of the population has it.”
“What are you saying?”
“They lured us here for our blood.”
It was so ghastly, so unreal, Deb didn’t want to believe it.
Florence touched one of the Sheriff’s open eyes. She plucked off a contact lens, exposing an eyeball as bloodshot as Teddy’s.
“Besides hemophilia, they’re also anemic. They may have other blood disorders as well. Without regular transfusions, they’ll die.”
“That’s fine by me.” Deb tugged on a sweater. “Does he have any more bullets?”
Florence checked his belt. “No. But he’s got a knife.” Florence offered the switchblade to Deb.
“I’ve got one in my room. I need to go back upstairs to look for my friend, Mal.”
“I’m looking for my daughter and her daughter. Letti and Kelly. I’ll start on this floor, you start upstairs. If you find anything, yell.”
Deb nodded. “You do the same.”
Florence stood up. “Both of these men were big, strong. I’m guessing there are others. But a deep cut ought to stop them, even kill them.”
“Shouldn’t we call someone?”
Florence pointed at the Sheriff. “Who? The police?”
Deb had no answer for that. “Do you have a car?”
“No. Flat tire. But now I’m thinking they shot the tire out. It sounded like a gunshot.”
“Us too. That’s what Mal said. A gunshot.”
“When you find him, get out to the road, see if you can flag down a car for help. But be careful. We don’t know how many of them there are. Talking to Eleanor, I get the feeling there might be a lot. And she obviously has outside help, if she was able to see our triathlon applications.”
Deb nodded. “I know one of them. An asshole desk clerk back at the event hotel. He’s the one who sent me here.”
Florence frowned. “Maybe we should stick together.”
“We can cover more ground by splitting up. And we may not have a lot of time.”
Florence seemed to consider it, then held out her hand. “Good luck.”
Deb shook it. “You too.”
They held their grip for a moment, and Deb sensed a finality there. She wondered if she’d ever see the older woman again.
Then Deb walked out of Florence’s room. The hallway was empty, silent. She took the stairs slowly, holding the handrail. Previously, the inn had seemed kitschy and somewhat amusing. Now it was downright ominous. The floors, the walls, the ceilings—Deb could imagine secret passages and trap doors everywhere she looked. This entire building was a funhouse straight out of hell. Mal’s words of the many disappearances over the years kept echoing in Deb’s mind. Five hundred people had gone missing in this area, and this place was no doubt the reason why.
Eleanor and her family have been operating with impunity for decades.
How big has her clan become?
“So big it needed the blood of five hundred people,
” Deb whispered to herself.
She made it down the stairs without any freaks popping out at her, and approached the Theodore Roosevelt room.