by Todd Russell
"Kill him?" Walkins asked.
"Just make him. . .uncomfortable. I want him to come to me for her."
Walkins enjoyed the plan.
"As soon as you're finished with Templin, follow me back here."
Walkins nodded.
Kyle put a cold finger on Walkins' soiled, bare chest.
"But if this thing falls through. . ."
"Nothing will go wrong. They don't suspect a thing."
Kyle wasn't as confident. "We'll see."
* * *
In another time, there had been Sherry.
Sherry and he had been together first. They'd met in eighth grade at a school dance and almost immediately fallen for each other. At that age, their parents called the relationship "puppy love" (Richard's father coined it, "just a cherry-bust"), but to the young lovers, it was much more. Richard and Sherry had caught the arrow, yet neither of them would know it until it was over.
They were a typical teenage couple they went everywhere together, scrawling their names on each other's notebooks (Richard carved her name on the inside of his locker), everything was smooth until the tenth grade.
Until Sherry showed her real self. It took two years for it to happen, but when it did, it came in full force. Over a few weekends, she two-timed Richard a half-dozen times. Richard never understood why Sherry acted that way, and in the next two years, it went unexplained. She gave him excuses but never answers.
Through his dreams, Richard was assaulted by pictures, fragments and memories of Sherry. She had been his world.
And now there was Jessica. Jessica was not Sherry but she represented what he had wanted Sherry to be. Jessica seemed like the one woman in his life that he could at last depend on.
Not his mother. Jessica had wanted to know about his mother but the story there was too dark and disappointing for Richard to delve into.
Richard knew it was Sherry he meant to hit, not Jessica, and all the guilt that had ever existed stemmed from his relationship with Sherry.
In another time, Richard Templin stirred in his sleep.
* * *
Jessica couldn't hear anything but crashing waves. No wind, no rattling tree branches, only crashing upon crashing waves. The island was unusually quiet.
They haven't given up yet. They aren't done searching for us.
A different sound startled her.
The crack of twigs. Footsteps approaching.
Jessica bent down and started to shake Richard. He stirred but didn't wake. She paused, straining to hear it again, just once more, and there were no twigs breaking or footsteps. Her ears were playing sound games with her head. Richard turned over and snored.
The waves crashed again.
Imagination.
Five minutes passed of staring into the darkness. She realized that all along this had been what she'd been so afraid of: night alone in the twisting ravine. Even though she wasn't alone, Richard wasn't able to tell her that she was only hearing "night sounds." Her immediate protection, the switchblade, was clutched with bone-white knuckles in her hand.
She tried to take her mind off the darkness and think of something else. Perhaps a song.
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine. . .
Wrong song.
She tried to think of Skynyrd songs since that was the last music Richard mentioned but the song titles held disturbing ties to events on the island. Tuesday's Gone was a reminder of every day being gone and time having no meaning on the island. That Smell reminded her of Butch Smith smothering her while Richard fought the wrestler.
So she left Skynyrd and went back to counting bottles of beer.
She reached ninety bottles of beer and stopped. She could have used those nine bottles of beer right then. Oh how smoothly they would have gone down. Nine bottles of beer for a lady her size would have numbed her senses. Now that's what she needed because when you weren't sober you didn't worry.
You didn't get scared.
Different song. Sing a different song . . .
She stopped, caught in her own confusion, because she could not think of the opening words to even one other song.
Except Jingle Bells, but Christmas Music was less appropriate than the bottles of beer.
So she gave up the singing and started to count something more ridiculous: sheep.
But that's supposed to make you sleepy, you don't want to be sleepy, 'cause if you're sleepy you dream, if you dream, you have nightmares, and if you have nightmares. . .
She passed on the sheep. It was never sheep, anyway, that she counted to force herself to sleep. It was rocks, wasn't it? Rocks, in her opinion, had to be the most boring things on earth.
Another twig cracked. And another.
Another.
Branches gave way and opened toward her. Startled, she dropped her weapon.
Hands. Terror. HANDS.
The hands found their mark.
A hand on her throat.
A hand on her mouth.
Hot breath on her neck.
She was being dragged away when she finally started screaming, the sound muffled in her captor's hand covering her mouth.
* * *
In his dream he was once again being seized by huge birds. However, this time, the birds appeared much more vividly. They were huge eagles with fiery red eyes and sharp hooked beaks, their fur silky and stiff. The eagle's talons dug into his flesh, gripped like barbed wire, promising pain if he attempted struggle.
But he didn't struggle because he knew where they were taking him.
Paradise.
The eagles carried him up, up, and away toward paradise in the blue skies. He could feel the wind blowing colder as the eagles carried him higher. One eagle carried his arms while the other concentrated on his legs. A movie he'd watched as a kid, The Wizard of Oz, the scene where the monkeys with creepy, flapping wings carried off Dorothy and her friends.
But they weren't carried off to paradise.
And he wasn't either.
Richard began to feel fear, coupled with pain from the talons digging into the flesh beneath his wrists and below his knees. Penetrating with the ease of a knife through raw meat, four hooked ice-picks secured his frightened body.
"Where are you taking me?" he screamed but the birds ignored. They kept flying him closer and closer to something. He sensed it wasn't a where, it was a thing.
The skies surrounding him began to darken.
He never thought to wake up. A stupid thing too, because at that moment Jessica was being dragged away and he was about to be attacked.
The skies blackened. Richard couldn't see the eagles any longer. He didn't feel their talons in his skin.
* * *
Now Richard was in a crowded room with a party going full bore.
Mary Ellen Brubet was bragging about having the biggest tits on campus. Roy Shyler was telling his bored girlfriend about his grand slam last year. Paul Franklin was trying everything to get laid by the only girl in the room who hadn't turned him down. Billy Zebosky was leaning under the half-barrel, tapping it into his mouth like a drinking faucet.
Several others with faces he didn't recognize were puking. His own Sherry was somewhere, probably two-timing him again. The house was trashed with empty and partially-full beer and whiskey bottles, magazines, books and people sprawled everywhere like memories of a fierce battle. Drugs were going strong in one corner: pot, coke, barbs, someone was even riding the rocket.
And he was in the other corner nearest the door with three others admiring it: the homeowner's sleek .357.
It was a clean machine.
A sharp machine.
A death machine.
Before Richard could stop the nightmare from reeling fast forward, from plunging him into the real horror, some fool opened the front door.
And there stood a dozen uniformed men in blue.
Willy Parker, the only kid more stoned than him, freaked, snatched the gun and started shooting. Firing all over the plac
e.
"NO, YOU CRAZY FUCKER! NO! DON'T SHOOOOOOOOOOTTTTT!" Screaming everywhere.
"STOP YOU FUCKING IDIOT! STOP SHHHHHHOOOOOTTTTINNNGGG!"
Richard wrestled for the gun, but was too late, because the death machine had already claimed two lives. Followed by a third when he tried to grab the gun.
Gunfire from the police. More screams.
Richard was holding the .357 Magnum. And something else.
A heathly chunk of Willy Parker's brain.
"DROP IT OR YOU'RE DEAD!" a voice screamed over the flurry.
He dropped it. Searched for words. Faltered. Suddenly something that hadn't happened then happened now.
A man with one eye came rocketing through the doorway, brandishing a long buck knife.
Standing in front of him.
Glaring.
"You did this to me." the man pointed to his poked-out eye, the flesh flapping and useless.
When Richard realized what was happening he started screaming, his blood turned into icy mountain water.
The man with one eye was not a dream, nor was the long buck knife that he jammed into Richard's leg.
CHAPTER 28
Two nightmares merged.
Jessica was being dragged away by Kyle Roberts while the man with one eye stood over him along with his partner. Their faces were lit by torch. He knew both. Seth Everson glared with one eye while Donald Walkins used both. Their eyes moved to the knife wedged in Richard's leg like an axe in a chopping block. Blood was starting to gush fountain-like from the wound.
The pain hit him sudden and sharp. He fought it, but the pain was incredible, imitating the feeling of someone standing over his leg sawing into the bone, through the bone, sawing, sawing and sawing.
"You did this to me, you cocksucker!" Seth ground the knife further into Richard's leg. Walkins grabbed Richard like a rag doll, bent his arms behind his back and held him while the one-eyed man landed a fist to his solar-plexus.
"OOFF!" was the sound emitted from Richard's lips. Too much pain. Sawing, oh, the sawing.
"Richard!" Jessica voice faded, legs kicking bushes as the darkness swallowed her.
"Jessica!" he returned the call.
Seth took another fierce punch, this time a left cross to the chest. The air escaped from Richard like a popped balloon.
His whole leg was numb, only feeling the warmth of his blood flowing rapidly down his ankle.
"You're a lucky sumbitch, Templin," Walkins said, shooting foul breath in his ear. "Lucky that Roberts wants you alive, or Seth and I would carve you right here."
"YOU DID THIS TO ME!" Seth screamed, punching Richard in the face.
Richard hung barely to consciousness.
"Seth don't like you much, Templin." Walkins chuckled. "Thinks you're a punching bag."
"Bastards," Richard gasped, feeling the light and dark. Everything started spinning.
The sawing bone feeling in his leg continued and then Seth yanked out the knife.
"Better stop the bleeding, Seth." Walkins suggested. "Stick him with the torch."
The sawing turned to burning. His leg was a raging fire. The smell of scorched flesh rose instantly to his nostrils and gagged him.
The two men cheered over Richard's pain.
Pain. The pain.
"I'm supposed to give you this message," Walkins said, twisting his arm behind his back. "Roberts is waiting for you."
Walkins threw Richard to the ground and he reached for his throbbing leg.
"Let's get back," Walkins told Seth, "I can't wait to fuck that bitch."
No . . . no—NO! Richard tried to rise, but the second he moved, Walkins spun around with a right hook and sent him back to dreamland.
* * *
Kyle Roberts licked his lips as he dragged Jessica.
"Let me go, please" Jessica cried, pounded him with her fists. Kyle didn't say anything while dragging her. He was too excited by how easy capturing her had been.
There were two ten-foot branch-poles sticking out of the ground next to the campfire that she hadn't seen there earlier today.
Roberts dragged her to the poles and started tying her hands. She struggled, flailed and tried to kick for groin like Richard had done to Bat Jackson but kept missing. Roberts kept that vulnerable spot of his anatomy out of reach.
"Why are you doing this? Please, don't."
He had her wrists tied, spread eagle, one to each pole, and was working on the legs.
"Why are you doing this?"
He fastened her right leg first, then left, leaving the knots so tight the rope burned her flesh.
"WHY—"
"Be quiet," Kyle said at last, and came from behind her and peered into her face.
For the first time she saw what Kyle Roberts looked like and gasped.
His face looked burned. Huge zits waited to be popped on a face so pale a red it was almost violet. His eyes lay beneath two of the bigger bubbles (acne? warts?) darkly green, depthless eyes. His nose was all wrong, barely a visible lump beneath the outlandish, bubbling flesh. A couple of black scabs marked each cheek like Wrangler brandings on a pair of jeans. His mouth was completely toothless and his breath was foul.
"Welcome, my name is Kyle Roberts. What's yours?"
"J—Jessica."
"Nice to meet you, Jessica. You've been here awhile it seems and, no thanks to Richie, haven't stopped by. What do you think of my home?"
"Please let me go, I don't belong here."
"Now, now. If you didn't belong here," he ran a finger up and down her cheek, "then you wouldn't be here right now."
She spit in his face.
He slapped her.
"I don't care how you acted on Richie's side of the island. But now that you are over here, you'll learn that there is a proper way to behave. You will learn real fast to respect me. Understand?"
Her eyes widened.
Kyle Roberts walked over to the fire and removed a torch. He turned and waved the torch in front of her, the hot dancing flames reaching close enough to sting her flesh.
"Now there are some basic rules over here for you to learn. Rule number one: there is no escape. Rule number two: you serve at my pleasure."
You serve at my pleasure.
"Look, maybe we can work something out."
"I'm sure over time we will work a lot of things out. You women are all the same. You want to try and do things for us. As if doing anything for us changes what you do to us. We are the hunters, Jessica and you are nothing but tagging along and getting in the way."
"Richard taught me to take care of myself on this island."
"Richie taught you how to get caught. If you had been over here you would never have been caught so easily. I guess you washed on the wrong shore."
"Please, don't."
"Oh, I will do everything you're thinking and more. No wonder Richie so greatly appreciates your company. It's really too bad, he'll never have it again."
She struggled against the ropes.
"Actually, he will have your company again. You see, my pretty one, of all the things Richie being predictable stands at the top of the pile. He will try to come here and rescue you."
She couldn't stop herself from speaking her thoughts. "You make me ill."
He didn't slap her this time.
He brought the torch up to her bare leg and burned her instead.
The white-hot sensation struck pain centers in her brain. She flashed back on a time when she'd touched the stove burner when it was bright red, burning small round welts on her palm. The pain had been bad before, but the pain of fire, a raging yellow-red flame on the flesh of her calf stung worse.
Roberts held the torch on her calf long enough to bring several sand-dollar blisters. He smiled satisfied, and withdrew the torch.
"I don't want to hurt you," Roberts lied, "but if you insist upon having outbursts like that. . ."
The thirteen college girls, she remembered Richard telling her that he killed, cut them into tiny piec
es and burned or scattered them in the woods.
"I can see from the look in your eyes, you know I speak the truth." He moved forward and—with the hand not holding the torch squeezed her breasts with cold sensitivity.
"Nice tits."
"Bastard," she murmured.
"Pardon me?" He stopped squeezing and twisted instead. The pain from his grip replaced the recurrent stinging of her burned calf.
"Please don't do this."
He stopped hurting her. She breathed once again as the pain in her breasts dissipated, only to reignite the pain in her calf. The pain which seemed to diffuse, up to her knee.
Butchered. HE BUTCHERED THEM.
At that moment, two men came to the camp a large, husky man with a beard, and a thin-figured man with black, greasy hair, and a gruesome, poked-out eye.
"All taken care off," the husky man said
"Nice work," Roberts handed the torch to the man with one-eye. He cupped his hands as if he were making a snowball.
Or was maybe nervous? Nervous that Richard wasn't as predictable as Roberts believed?
Jessica wouldn't describe Richard as predictable. And then she remembered Richard saying he had something to show her. She hoped it was something that would help him rescue her.
Don't let that be another lie, Richard.
Roberts told the two men something she couldn't quite hear, but recognized the tone as being an order of some kind. They went away into the dark night, and once again Roberts and she were alone.
"Oh how rude of me, Jessica. I didn't introduce you to Donald Walkins and our recently one-eyed friend, Seth Everson. Mr. Walkins had to put out that eye when Seth crossed me. You see, crossing me is a bad, bad thing."
He showed Jessica an odd, toothless smile. He put his index finger—
(Dozens of tiny black bugs crawled through their masters fingertips, crawled down her shirt, crawled over and under and down her breasts.)
—on her neck. He caressed it without affection or love. More like appreciation.